HEOS is a family of wireless music players
that allow you to ďŹ ll every room with music
and control it all effortlessly from your Apple
or Android device.
Plug in, co
onne
ect to WiF
Fi and
d pla
ay. Easy.

Pokémon Go is Just the Beginning
Well didn’t we all have fun with Pokémon Go this month? It’s weird to
think we started writing this issue in a world where Pokémon Go didn’t
exist... and now here we are. Pokéobsessed.
The game was met with the usual hysteria,
like any new thing that captures the
imagination of a signiﬁcant enough
percentage of the population. There was
even a brief moment when the more
excitable commentators were sure the tiny
monsters could read all your email...
Thing is, Pokémon Go is merely the ﬁ rst
hugely popular step along the inevitable
path to augmented reality, for everyone.
Not just for games - all the time.
As AR goes, this game is still fairly
primitive. Making the little monsters
appear in the real world is kind of kludgy:
hold up your phone, look with the eye
of faith and they seem to be standing
on the path right in front of you. The
eponymous ‘mons remain unaware of
their surroundings, of course. They’ll
stand impossibly on awkward bits of the
environment and cycle through their
canned animations no matter what is
actually around them. Ignore your dog.
Pokémon Go is to augmented reality as
an old-school Viewmaster is to VR. It’s a
smoke-and-mirrors curiosity to see how
we’ll react to what is going to be one of the
most historically signiﬁcant shifts in the
way we inhabit the world.
The bits of the game where real world
locations become signiﬁcant gameplay
elements though? That is smart. That is
a shadowy hint of the shape of things to
come. A world where objects mean wildly
diﬀerent things to diﬀerent people, all
dependent on what software layer they use.
Make no mistake: AR is the next
smartphone. It’s the next thing that everyone
over 35 will say “what on Earth would you
want that for?” and then within 20 years
everyone ON Earth will be using.
By the time the Kindergartners of
2016 do their HSC, people will be talking

about how weird it was to live in a world
without AR. Everyone will have some
kind of viewing system (to be invented
and marketed by the next Apple) and
we will interact with everything from
shops to public transport to our friends
via graphics seamlessly superimposed
over the real world. People will feel weird
taking their viewer oﬀ at night. Some
won’t take it oﬀ at all.
I could be wrong about this. The sheer
software engineering task still facing
Microsoft with its Hololens device, for
instance, might be bigger than it seems. Or
there could be a crucial hardware aspect
yet to be ﬁgured out. Maybe it will take 20
years, not 12. Not 25 though.
Because so many elements are already
in place. We have high-bandwidth wireless
data via 4G. We have transparent, bendable
OLED displays - expensive now, but
cheap once they go mass-production. We
have nanoscale processors, and once the
seven-nanometre “die process” for building
transistors ramps up, computers will be
everywhere, in everything. There is even
work being done on energy harvesting so
your AR viewer won’t need bulky batteries
- it will be powered by the heat of your skin,
by the movement of your limbs.
Pokémon Go and the inevitable tidal wave
of copycat games that will now follow it,
show that a huge section of society is ready
to blur the line between the virtual and the
real. Now it’s up to developers to make this
kind of technology even more useful.
It’s not a question of if. It’s not even
really a question of when. The only
question is, will Apple call their AR
viewer... the iBall?
ANTHONY FORDHAM
afordham@nextmedia.com.au

P OP S C I . C O M. AU

3

42
DRONES
FOR
ALL!
What’s the actual
deal with drones?
You can buy them
everywhere, but can
you fly them anywhere?
What’s the law? And
who is making money
off these things?

Featuring
30
A DOGFIGHTING MACHINE
Meet an AI that can beat
military pilots

50
THE RE-ANIMATORS
Could freezing to death actually
save your life?

56
SCIENCE OF HEROES
Has the Olympics gone mad
with technological power?

64
THE ETHICS OF VR
Enter another world. Now how
should you behave?

04

PO P U L A R S CI E NCE

Contents

From the
Archives
78
INTRODUCING THE
SPACE SHUTTLE!
Wernher von Braun tells us
all about the new-fangled
space plane in our 100 Year
Anniversary issue!

A BEAUTIFUL
LAMP... FOR A
FRIGHTENING
PRICE
by
A N T H O N Y FO R DH A M

The CSYS task light from
Dyson costs $850. This
means the company doesn’t
want to see one on every
desk. Instead, Dyson hopes
the CSYS will become a
design classic, like the Eames
Lounge and Ottoman.
Or at least, that’s the only
explanation that
makes sense
because
beautiful as
this lamp is
in its LED
simplicity, it’s
not otherwise
obviously
superior to the
glut of $200$300 super-lamps
cluttering up Kickstarter
right now.
Available in silver and
black, the CSYS task lamp
pushes 587 lumens through

FAMILY AF FAIR

eight warm-white LEDs. The
distinctive arm of the lamp
hides a copper heat tube that
carries heat away from the LED
assembly which, supposedly,
extends its life. Indeed, Dyson
boasts this lamp can last
40 years. Perhaps that also
explains the price.
The arm can be pushed
back and forth, and
lifted up and down
horizontally. A
counterweight and
some very smooth
casters makes
this action almost
totally effortless fingertip operation
is definitely the idea.
Oddly, the instructions
admonish against moving the
counterweight to adjust the
height which is shame: pushing
the counterweight with a thumb
is much more satisfying.

Integrating the
CSYS into any but
the most minimalist
of décors will prove
a challenge. It has
a look that’s so
industrial it almost
seems unfinished.
And when the arm is
positioned centred on
the upright, the CSYS
adopts a distinctly...
iconic look. Great for
a modern presbytery,
not so hip for a bunch
of godless architects.
While the light from
the lamp is an almost
perfect warm white,
and brightness can be
adjusted by holding
down the touchsensitive switch,
positioning options
are oddly limited.
It’s up, down, in out
and twirl. For a lamp
that advertises itself
as giving you light
“exactly where you
need it”, not being able
to tilt the LED module
to compensate for, as
in our case, a sofa with
an extra-wide arm, can
be frustrating.
But really, for all
its extreme longevity
(144,000 hours is the
claim) and the way it
remembers brightness
settings between
sessions, the CSYS is
more than just a tool.
It’s a conversation
starter. Like the
conversation about
how you spent $850
on a desk lamp.

The CSYS task lamp - and its taller but otherwise identical floor lamp brother - has been around for a few
years now. It was the brainchild not of James Dyson (he of the vacuums), but rather his son, Jake. Dad
bought Son out last year. Amazingly, back in 2011 the lamps were even MORE expensive.

HIT
LIST
10 Great Ideas in Gear
All prices in USD because of Brexit or something...

2 GIROPTIC
360 CAM
We’re still figuring out
what 360 cameras can
do. Giroptic makes its
modular; with different
base attachments, it
can screw into a light
socket to monitor your
home, record on-the-go
stunts, or live-stream
events through an
ethernet port. That’s
a start. $499
3 RAZER CORE
Up your gaming game
without the bulk of a
desktop PC. The Razer
Core (plus a graphics
card) lets you plug
massive computing
power into compatible
notebook PCs. $499
4 ANKER
POWERHOUSE
While USB battery
packs are great for day
trips, the Powerhouse is
perfect for car camping,
packing a weekend’s
worth of juice. It’s the
size of a small cooler
and weighs over 4.5
kgs, but it can run your
minifridge overnight.
$500

by
DAV E
GERSHGOR N

8

PO PUL A R S CI E NCE

5 MOLESKIN SMART
WRITING SET
If you like old-school
writing but still want
digital replicas of your
brilliance, Moleskine’s
smart notebook and
pen set automatically
syncs your musings to
the cloud. $199

3
4

6 HERO SMART
PILL DISPENSER
Not every gadget is
made for millennials.
This pill dispenser
ensures the right mix
of pills at the right
time, with alerts for
when meds need to be
reordered. The Hero
can hold up to 10 drugs,
and can even handle
multiple users. $599

6
5

7

7 LEXAR IPHONE
MICROSD CARD
READER
Why bother taking all
that drone footage
if you can’t share it?
Download photos,
videos, and audio from
any microSD card,
and share it from your
phone or iPad. $41
8 HP SPECTRE
At 10.4 mm thick,
the Spectre is the
slimmest, sleekest
laptop you can buy.
Outfitted with Intel
Core i5 or i7 processors
and USB-C ports, HP’s
latest machine ushers
in the future of laptops.
AUD$2,299
9 ZEPP SMART BAT
Baseball is all analytics
these days. Now so is
the bat. Zepp quantifies
your swing by tracking
your bat’s angle, position, and speed,
and then offers tips
(via smartphone app)
on how to improve.
Price TBD

8
9

10 NEW NORMAL
HEADPHONES
Most wireless
headphones aren’t
wireless—they need
a cable for charging.
New Normal skips
the cable for an
integrated USB plug.
Plug straight into a
computer or battery
pack to rejuice. $199

1 EIGHT SMART
MATTRESS COVER
Sleep-tracking
mattresses can cost
up to $8,000. Don’t
lose sleep over that
outlay; opt for the
Eight mattress cover. It
measures biometrics,
light, and noise to
gauge how well you’re
snoozing. Then it makes
recommendations on
how to catch better Z’s.
Starting at $99

AUG U ST 201 6

Now
Iteration/Innovation

G IS FOR
EFFICIENCY
by
ANTHONY
FORDHAM

When it comes to high-end audio, the bills
don’t stop once the dream system is set up
in the dedicated listening room. Serious kit
draws serious power, and there’s something
rather... inelegant about that.
The problem is in power amplification.
Build an 800W system using a Class A amp,
and sure it will sound amazing, but it could
draw 800W of power when switched on,

There has to be a better way.
Other amp circuit types (see
below) can improve efficiency but
at the expense of signal purity.
And when you’re spending car (or
even house) money on a stereo,
it’s all about purity.
Now, manufacturers have
come up with a solution. Called
Class G amplification, it’s being
touted as the “hybrid” of amp
systems. Instead of using a
single power supply, Class G
uses several.
What’s more, amps designed
with Class G circuits often

power signals. The system
automatically switches up to
the bigger power supply when
needed - either when the volume
is pumped or even just when the
music gets to “the loud bit”.
The result is an amp that runs
cooler, and can also generate
extreme levels of amplification.
Managing the switch intelligently
is complex, so Class G amps
have multiple output circuits.
It’s certainly less
straightforward than a big,
thumping Class A amp. But
sometimes, keeping it simple
it stupid.

It’s rare to f ind a proper audiophile multi- channel receiver, but
Arcam has given it a crack with the AVR850. Class G amplif ication
is just the start: this machine also has one of the most
sophisticated “room correction” analysers in the business.

E: $ 9999
arcam.co.u k

CLASS DIVISION

Diﬀerent ampliﬁers use diﬀerent circuit designs to boost gain (or volume). Each has its pros and cons.
CLASS A

CLASS B

CLASS A/B

CLASS C

CLASS D

CLASS G

Pro: Simple, can give
very pure and accurate
signal, no distortion at
the “crossover” point
between treble and
bass. Considered the
audiophile gold standard.
Con: Very inefficient.
Lots of wasted power
which is converted to
heat. Can be bulky.

Pro: Much more
efficient than Class
A due to only running
half the output devices
at a time based on the
signal’s waveform.
Con: Very obvious
crossover distortion,
rarely used in audiophile
products. Effectively
obsolete thanks to...

Not used for audio,
mostly for boosting
RF signals, because
needs to have distortion
removed from output
stage. Theoretically
could attain 100%
efficiency but in reality
usually operates at
60-70% due to peak
current limitations..

Pro: Super-efficient
thanks to rapid power
switching, can be
very compact and
lightweight, can use a
small power supply.
Con: Not much dynamic
headroom, can’t
compete on sound
quality with expensive
Class A or A/B amps.

Pro: Much more efficient
than Class A with
comparable quality.
Con: Still expensive due
to complexity of multiple
power supplies and
control systems. May
offend sensibilities of
audiophiles who believe
circuit complexity can
impact sound quality.

10

PO PUL A R S CI E NCE

Follow Me
360 Orbit

www.xirodrone.com
Available at:

0615

Now
Smarter Home

COLOURED LIGHTS
GET VOICE COMMANDS
The Hue range of Wifi-enabled
smart bulbs from Philips are
expensive, unnecessary... and
once you put a few in your
house, you’ll never want to go
back to plain old globes.
These second-generation
LED bulbs, downlights and
stand-alone lamps now output
more light - up to 800 lumens
- and more distinct colours,
although the standard screw-in
or bayonet bulbs still struggle to
reproduce really brilliant greens.
But the best new feature has
to be Homekit compatibility.
This makes it possible to control
the lights using Siri on an Apple

device. With a combination of
individual light controls, room
controls, and setting distinct
“scenes”, even just dimming the
lights to watch a movie becomes
a multimedia event...

Lights begin to dim down to fully
off over 30 minutes. As you walk
to the bedroom, you hit one of
the four buttons on a Tap switch,
which changes just your bedside
lamp to the “read” prof ile.
(You could also do this via
the app on your phone.)

The Hue Go - quickly christened
Hugo in our house - is a batteryequipped LED lamp in the shape of a
bowl. Unlike some of the traditional
bulbs, Hugo (main image) is very
good at replicating a full range of
colours, including bright intense
greens. He comes with a wall plug,
but the internal battery will last 2-3
hours at 80% brightness.

0300
ADVANCED USERS REQUIRED
Philips provides an app for nuanced control of
the Hue system - indeed, you need the app to
set up the lights in the ﬁ rst place. But it doesn’t
exactly make its most advanced features
obvious. The app comes with a bunch of preset
“scenes” but creating new ones is a bit ﬁddly.

12

PO PUL A R S CI E NCE

Though it’s never explained, to create a speciﬁc
light colour and intensity setting, you have to
manually set the light to what you want, and
then hit an unlabelled “plus” sign in the bottom
of the screen. Fortunately, there are a number
of third-party apps that add even more control.

A Philips Hue Go por table lamp is
set to switch to 15% bright in the
bathroom, becau se you know you
always seem to get up at 3am to
use the toilet. It switches off
again at 0430h.

P HOTOGR A P H BY

Jonathon Kambouris

Now
The Platform

14

P O P UL A R SC IENC E

AU GU ST 2 0 1 6

Now
The Platform

SELF-DRIVING
TO UTOPIA
It might be only four years old, but Lyft is already proving
itself more than just a ride-hailing app—it’s a vision for the
future. In May, reports surfaced that the San Francisco-based
startup and General Motors would begin testing a fleet of selfdriving electric taxis starting next year. This came months after
GM invested $670 million in Lyft as part of a shared mission to
deliver autonomous vehicles worldwide. If Lyft co-founder Logan
Green has his way, car ownership and operation will be a luxury,
not a necessity. And that could forever transform the face of our
cities, suburbs, and cars themselves.
Are the days of owning a vehicle over?
No, but I predict that the majority of
folks will opt for the variety and flexibility
you’ll get in a network like Lyft’s. Consider
this: Why would you want to own a car and
have to do all that work yourself? Why
would you want to worry about
parking yourself, deal with washing the car
yourself? Plus, an estimated 94

of the time. When you start to imagine
all of the idle vehicles disappearing—
there’s a massive amount of room to
make roads more efficient. Imagine a
neighborhood that has no cars parked
on the sides of the streets; those streets
can then be narrowed. In a downtown
area, you can have wider sidewalks.
Cities can be built more around people.

“Start to imagine all of the idle vehicles
disappearing—there’s a massive amount
of room to make roads more efficient.”
percent of road accidents are caused
by human error. For safety reasons, it
only makes sense to operate autonomous
cars on a network.
How will that change a landscape that’s
built around cars that we own and drive?
A car is used, on average, only 4 percent

PH OTO G RA P H BY

Cody Pickens

You don’t have to have thousandcar parking garages taking up entire
buildings. In the suburbs, you don’t need
a driveway taking up half of your front
yard. You don’t have to have a massive
parking lot in front of every shopping
mall; you can have pickup and drop-off
areas instead.

POPUL AR

Q&A

SCIENCE

Edited & condensed by
XAVIER HARDING

OK, but we still have to store all
those driverless cars somewhere.
That will be one of the big challenges.
It’s going to be a combination of small
staging areas in dense parts of town and
larger staging areas a little farther outside
town. But you don’t have to clutter up the
core of the city with a bunch of idle cars.
How will I and hundreds of others line
up for this robo taxi—in loading zones?
Yes, loading zones will be very important.
It’s already an issue in cities where Lyft
picks up and drops off and the car blocks
the flow of traffic. I think cities will need to
create loading zones to facilitate that.
How will cars look when they’re not
designed for drivers? Is it just a room on
wheels? Netflix and a minifridge?
I don’t think they’ll have steering wheels. I
don’t think you’ll expect anyone will have to
step in and take over. You’ll have more room,
but the rest is a huge unknown.
We don’t know what people are going to
want to spend their time doing in these
cars. Are they going to want to work?
Sleep? Are they going to want more social
configurations so they can have more
conversations with fellow passengers?
Probably some of all of those. In the next
few years, we’ll start to learn what people
will want as we start testing these vehicles
in the field. But ultimately, they will look
very different than cars do today.

P OP SC I . C O M. AU

15

AUG U ST 201 6

Now
The Upgrade

DRONES GET HEAT VISION
When you start to get serious about
your quad- or hexacopter, it’s all about
custom speccing a rig to your needs.
And now one of those options is
forward-looking infra-red (FLIR) vision.
DJI’s prosumer Inspire and more
hardcore Matrice drones can bolt on
the Zenmuse XT FLIR camera, enabling
the drone to capture IR images at

335x256 or 640x512. That
might seem low-res
compared to 4K video,
but IR is a diﬀerent beast.
When you download TIFF
images or MP4 video from
the camera, software can
analyse the heat reading
on each pixel.
The camera can also
be set up to only start

JARGON BUSTER:
MICROBOLOMETER
The sensor in many IR cameras.
When electromagnetic radiation
(in this case, infrared) hits a pixel
coated in detector material, its
electrical resistance changes.
Each pixel is processed,
converted to a temperature and
built up into an image, usually
with white as the hottest and
black as the coldest.

16

POPSCI . CO M . AU

the euphemistic “ﬁnding
that rascal” and the rather
more prosaic locating of
hotspots in a landﬁll. Since
the Zenmuse XT is also well
set-up to detect human
body heat, DJI is pitching
the system to search
and rescue and other
emergency services too.
Reall it’s ju t one

STATE
YOUR
INTENTIONS

Now
Geek Chic

A PO
GAM
PC T
DOE
Remember the
OpenPandora? The
pocket-sized, Linuxpowered PC designed
and built by an online
community to play retro
games? Of course you
don’t - the OpenPandora
project was a textbook
example of how a bunch
of amateur electrical
and computer engineers
scattered across half of
Europe can’t compete
with the likes of Apple,
Sony or Samsung.
Despite its massive
promise, OpenPandora
lived its life behind the
technological curve. It
took so long to design
and build, that by the time
complete units started
reaching backers, its
power was eclipsed by
the average smartphone.
But that hasn’t stopped
the OpenPandora
community... or rather,
a splinter of that
community that has
gone to create a new
community. It might be
kind of clunky-looking, it
might only have a 720p
resistive display and a
1.5GHz CPU, but the
philosophy of Pyra is to
offer a pocket computer
without the compromises
of mass production.
Name a socket or
plug, and Pyra has it. You
can connect a mouse,

18

POPUL A R S CI E NCE

Open source enthusiasts are all about physica l
keyboards, and unlike the OpenPandora, Pyra’s
keyboard is fully backlit. Tasty!

keyboard and monitor
and use Pyra as a desktop
PC with no adapters. It
has USB 3.0 OTG. It has a
massive 6000mAh battery,
4G, a dedicated microSDXC
slot just for alternate
operating systems (it ships
with Debian Linux), GPS,
6-axis digital compass,
barometer, hygrometer and
even a gas sensor.
Which means you can
use it to geo-tag methane
leaks. As well as play all
those retro games.
Most importantly of all,
Pyra has modular internals.
CPU, RAM and storage
are on one board, WiFi and
Bluetooth on a second, and
the display system on a
third. Each can be upgraded
totally independently.

It’s like the opposite of an
Apple device, in many ways.
Inside the janky plastic
case is an open system.
Owners get sent the full
schematics. It uses normal
screws. The whole point of
a Pyra is to pull it apart and
make it do weird stuff.
The official Pyra site
invites keen tinkerers to
drop a fairly massive chunk
of change on a pre-order:
400 Euros ($580) for the
top-spec model.
Yet this hefty price
should be reassuring. As
Kickstarter and Indiegogo
continue to be clogged
with impossibly cheap
pocket systems that will
probably never see the
light of day, at least it
means the Pyra is real.

Volume of wine,
in megalitres ,
expor ted by
Aus t ra l i a i n
2015, with a
m a rket va lue o f
$1 .9 billion. Our
biggest market by
volume is the UK.

A LOVELY DROP,
DONE QUICK(ISH)
There’s a machine here on Earth
making a constant supply of wine,
right on the spot. No ageing; just
an alchemical masterpiece slowly
turning regular grape juice into
special grape juice. Okay, maybe
it only makes a thimble’s worth an
hour. But hey, a regular bottle of red
can take six months at least - this
machine fills a bottle a month... or a
glass every five or so days.

WHO
David Attinger, wine connoisseur and
professor at Iowa State University,
invented the device to study the
fermentation process. While it’s not
just for wine, scientists at the École
Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
(EPFL) in Switzerland will use it to
test how different yeasts or changing
temperatures from climate change
alter wines and their tastes.

WHAT
Yeast is the single-celled party
animal responsible for making
beverages alcoholic. Winemakers

20

PO PUL A R S CI E NCE

mix the yeast with grape
juice; the yeast cells eat up
the sugar molecules in the
grape juice and rearrange
them into carbon dioxide
and alcohol through the
fermentation process.
That’s the so-called
“micro winery’s” secret.

HOW
“The device has a main
channel through which
the grape juice winds its
way. The yeast is placed
in adjacent compartments

and feeds into the main channel
through a very thin [film] with
holes called nanopores. It’s
almost as if they were in little
tea bags,” says the EPFL. The
small compartments mean the
fermentation process can happen
relatively quickly, so winemakers
can whip up a couple of batches
made from different yeasts or at
different temperatures to make
the best wine.

WHY
This isn’t the first we’ve heard
of lab-made wine this year; just
last month, we looked at Replica
Winery and Ava Winery, two
companies trying to disrupt the
wine industry by engineering wine
flavours or removing the grapes
altogether. Attinger’s micro winery
isn’t quick enough to make a full
glass by the end of the workday,

by
RYAN F MANDELBAUM

and is more of a research tool.
Attinger cites climate
change as a driver for the
machine. “Climate change is
having an impact on the quality
of grape crops around the
world,” he says.

CLIMATE CHANGE VS YOUR NEXT NIGHT OUT
French wine grapes are maturing earlier; a recent study s
early harvests used be associated with drought years, tha
climate change, the harvests are earlier even in years wit
drought. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, since the best
wines typically come from warmer-than-average summe
with lots of rainfall, according to NASA’s story about the
paper. But a system like Attinger’s might help winemake
change their practices as the climate changes.

AUGU ST 201 6

Now
Trend Reset

SPECTREK

AUGMENTED
REALITY: NOT
JUST TINY
MONSTERS
With the unstoppable
juggernaut that
is Pokémon Go
assimilating the entire
planet (ie Australia,
the US and the UK),
and every geek
commentator whipped
into a frenzy that the
app reads your email...
and then issuing a
correction that the
app does not in fact
read your email... it’s
easy to forget that
this, Nintendo’s first
smartphone foray,
is nowhere near the
first Augmented
Reality game. Here
are three others to
get you started.
by
A NTHONY
FOR DHAM

INGRESS
DEVELOPER: Niantic
T HE M E : Spyc ra f t,
hacking, wandering
the streets f ighting
over monuments
GAM E P L AY: Po kémon G o
fa n atics w i l l reco g n i s e
Ingress immediately.
Even though the theme is
about world domination
and secret societies, the
ga mepl ay i s very s i mi l ar
to Nintendo’s smash hit,
because it was developed
by the same team. In fact,
many PokéStops have
been impor ted directly
from Ingress... resulting in

ZOMBIES! RUN!
DEVELOPER: Si x to Sta r t a n d
Naom i A ld erma n
THE M E : Zombie apocalypse
with base building, a narrat ive,
and f itness
GAM E P L AY: The core idea is
easy to explain: as they run with
earphones in, the player hears
zombies moaning and shuffling

along behind them. Motivation!
Choose from Night of the Living
Dead shamblers all the way up
to 28 Days Later sprinters to set
the pace. O n to p o f t h i s i s l aye red
an episodic narrative, and the
oppor tunity to f ind vir tual gear
in the real wo rld to rebuild a
survivor’s base and more. Finish
the entire season one storyline?
Co n gratul at io n s; yo u ra n 470 km .

AUG U ST 201 6

Now
Tech Evolution

A DIVE WATCH
THAT WON’T
FAIL IN THE DEEP
A SCUBA system can have
all the readouts and dials that
will fit, but there’s something
reassuring about checking life
support at 20 metres against
a reliable, mechanical watch.
Seiko’s history with
divers is long and storied,
and the latest range of
(very expensive) titaniumand-ceramic dive watches
continues the tradition.
It’s not just the materials
that make this a $16,500
timepiece. The mechanical
movement inside is a heck
of a thing. Seiko’s signature
Spring Drive remains
an incredible piece of
engineering-in-miniature
since the first version was
introduced back in 1977.
As well as having a
mainspring made of a unique
(and secret) alloy called Spron
The cachet of a mechanical
movement with the
accuracy of quartz crystal

510, spring-drive
watches also use Seiko’s
Tri-synchro regulator.
Because a mechanical
watch is powered
entirely by stored kinetic
energy (from the winding
mechanism), it can be
difficult to design a
movement that’s as
accurate as a good
quality electric
quartz crystal.
The Tri-synchro
regulator actually
converts some of
the mainspring’s
energy into
electricity. Some is
diverted to power
a quartz crystal,
and the rest used
as magnetic force to
regulate the speed of
the mechanism.
The result is a
mechanical watch that
is accurate to one second
per day. And in this
particular incarnation,
water resistant to 10
atmospheres.
As it ought to be, for the
price of a nice hatchback.

If you’re going to live to be 100 years old, you’re going
to need some good books to read – and Bloomsbury
have you covered. Firstly, it’s time to read up on what
your long life will look like – The 100 Year Life talks
you through what your education and career(s) will
look like, and what you can do about retirement. Why
not pass the time until then with Breaking the Chains
of Gravity? This is the fascinating history of spaceflight
before NASA by National Science Week’s International
Guest Amy Shira Teitel.

WIN
1
OF 8
BLOOM
HOW TO ENTER

S
PRIZE P BURY
AC
VALUED KS
AT
$60

Win 1 of 8 Bloomsbury prize packs. Each pace includes a copy
of The 100 Year Life and Breaking the Chains of Gravity and is
valued at $60! All you need to do is email letters@popsci.com.au
with the subject line, “I WANT TO LIVE TO 100!” Please include
your name and address. Enter by 31 August 2016. 8 winners will
be drawn on 1 September 2016. Winners should allow 6-8 weeks
for books to be delivered. Good luck!

Now
Materials

Three miles from Apple’s Cupertino, California, headquarters, the tech giant is building
something as massive as its own global reach: a new campus dubbed “the Spaceship.”
With a nearly 1.6-km circumference, the campus will be wider than the Pentagon when
completed later this year and will house 13,000 employees—including design grandmaster
Jony Ive, who helped sculpt the iPhone, and CEO Tim Cook, who helps keep profits in
the billions-with-a-B territory. Apple’s Campus 2 (estimated cost: $6.7 billion) will run entirely
on clean energy, powered mostly by solar. But what’s really grabbed our
attention are the 3,000 panels of curved glass—the largest pieces of
structural glass ever made—that will encase Apple’s mothership. That and
by
the hollow concrete that lets this building breathe. We asked nicely, so Apple
XAVIER
HARDING
gave us an exclusive look at these breakthrough design elements.

26

POPUL A R S CI E NCE

CO U RT ESY AP P L E (3 )

APPLE’S GLASS HOUSE

THE GLASS

THE PRECAST CONCRETE

To build these sweeping panels, Apple could rely only on sedak/
seele: the company behind Steve Jobs’ favorite Apple Store (on
Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue). The German firm was tasked with
fabricating 3.2-metre glass ranging from 11 to 14 metres wide,
over twice the length of the largest standard pane. “We curved
the glass during lamination,” says sedak/seele managing director
Nelli Diller, “right after heating it to 600˚Celsius to strengthen it.”
The heaviest panes weigh over two tonnes. All told, the campus
boasts 900 panes of vertical glass, 1,600 panes of canopy glass,
510 panes of clerestory glass, and 126 panes for skylight glass.
The best glass today has a 3.175mm tolerance: It can be 3.175mm
longer or shorter than specified. But Apple’s glass, designed with
extreme precision, was made with a 0.7mm tolerance.

The new building actually breathes, thanks to custom hollow
concrete slabs that form both the floors and ceilings. Big air
gaps let the building self-ventilate, “largely removing the need
for conventional cooling methods,” says Stefan Behling, from
international architecture and design firm Foster + Partners,
the company behind the slabs. Designing the one-of-a-kind airy
concrete was done by a team of 70 engineers. Each concrete
slab averages 4 metres by 12 metres. And just like cinder blocks
and I-beams, the hollow middle “doesn’t take away from the
concrete’s strength,” says Behling. The company used 4,300
concrete slabs, weighing a total 192 tonnes, to create the
structure. Kind of light when compared with the Spaceship’s
300-tonne, 28-m-tall campus restaurant doors.

Now
The Round Up

TINY
SPEAKERS,
GIANT
SOUND
Top end audio is an investment
in musical fidelity. Sure you can
listen to compressed pop tunes
on your smartphone, but to get
the full emotional impact of the
music (audiophiles believe) you
need proper kit.
Traditionally, that's a pair
of 40kg speakers and a 20kg
amplifier. But in the last few
years, audiophile-grade earbuds
have become a thing.
Starting at around $1000 a
pair, these miniature powerhouses can generate a sound
stage that rivals massive overear cans. Thanks to innovations
in driver design - especially
balanced armature tech - the
sound gets bigger while the
buds stay small.
We rounded up five pairs of
high-end earbuds and gave
them a listen through an Astell
& Kern AK300 digital audio
player. Think of it as an iPod
with audiophile circuitry and the
ability to play high resolution
files. It too retails for $1399.
Earbuds give great noise
isolation (without active
noise cancellation, which can
impact sound quality) and are
discreet. They also show that
if you want
portability and
amazing audio,
by
you don't have
A NTH ON Y
to compromise.
FORDHAM

28

POPUL A R S CI E NCE

CAMPFIRE AUDIO - LYRA
PRICE: $1099
ARCHITECTURE (PER EARPHONE):
8.5mm beryllium physical vapour
deposition driver, ceramic enclosure.
BACKGROUND: Campfire Audio's debut
eschews the balanced armatures that
most buds use at this end of the market.
The beryllium driver has a very high
stiffness-to-mass ratio which translates
to better high-frequency response. Singledriver earphones are often said to be more
accurate, and as a bonus the enclosure is
smaller and lighter too.
PRO: Despite - or perhaps because of being the second cheapest in the roundup,
the Lyras are extremely impressive.
Again, the high end has much more detail
than you'll find in mass-produced buds,
and bass response is surprising for
something this small.
CON: Despite the exotic construction
material, the Lyras can't quite compete
when it comes to "bigness" or a spacious
and expansive sound stage. Bass is good,
but perhaps not quite tight enough for
fussier audiophiles.

ASTELL & KERN - ROSIE
PRICE: $1399
ARCHITECTURE (PER EARPHONE):
6x balanced armature drivers + custom
crossover. All-metal enclosure.
BACKGROUND: Famous sound engineer
Jerry Harvey continues to design a range of
high-end buds for performers who don't like
using fold-back speakers on stage. You can
pay thousands for pro-grade buds, but the
Rosies are built for the kind of "everyday"
listening normal people enjoy.
PRO: Amazing sound, huge soundstage and
mind-expanding detail. You'll rediscover
your favourite music all over again, hearing
elements you didn't realise were there and,
more importantly, feeling the real emotion
of the music. Think that's hyperbole? Try
it, you'll see what we mean. A fullness you
expect from big over-ear headphones, but in
a package you slip in your pocket.
CON: While the Rosies take normal tips, the
enclosure containing the drivers itself is
quite large for an earbud. Getting a perfect
fit will require experimentation with a range
of tips (included).

AUGU ST 201 6

QUEST FOR COMFORT
It has to be said that these ultra-expensive earphones are not
necessarily, out of the box, comfortable. Because they are larger than
the free Apple buds, they can be awkward to ﬁt in your ear. And all
require the cable to loop up over the ear, which some people don't like.
The good news? Each comes with a wide range of replaceable tips,
including silicon and memory foam. If you invest in a pair of these
buds, expect to spend at least an hour or so messing about to get a
perfect ﬁt. The point: don't give up. Once you ﬁgure it out, any of
these could be the most comfortable earphones you've ever owned.

DITA AUDIO - THE ANSWER

WESTONE - W60

CAMPFIRE AUDIO - JUPITER
PRICE: $1399
ARCHITECTURE (PER EARPHONE):
4x balanced armature drivers,
tubeless resonator
BACKGROUND: By using an
"optimised resonator assembly"
rather than the standard tubeand-dampener system of other
earphones, creator ALO claims
superior high frequency response.
Comes with a super funky leather
carrying case with "wool" lining.
PRO: Very crisp and clear high-end
with tonnes of detail. The case isn't
much bigger than a set of cheap
earphones but the sound is massive.
Punchy bass. Not too heavy. Thin
cable that resists tangling.
CON: Depending on your source,
high-end can get a bit harsh.
Noticeably better when playing highres files. Funky design looks great
but can be slightly uncomfortable,
depending on your ears.

PRICE: $1199
ARCHITECTURE (PER EARPHONE):
6x balanced armature drivers.
BACKGROUND: Westone grew from
a company originally started by
Jerry Harvey (see the Rosies) and
benefitted from much of his early
engineering work. The W60s are
billed as comfortable and relaxed
buds that can be used for extended
listening sessions with less fatigue.
PRO: Small and light, the W60s are
barely bigger than the cheap buds
that come with a smartphone. While
still designed for the cable to loop
over the ear, there's no "memory
plastic" (which can also be a con).
Vocal presentation on the W60s is
excellent and extremely intimate.
The claim is correct: you can listen
for hours with little fatigue. By far
the easiest earbuds in this roundup
to live with day-to-day.
CON: Very transparent to poor
audio sources. A low-res MP3 can
actually sound worse than on cheap
buds. And a poorly produced track
can result in vocals that are almost
painfully screechy.

PRICE: $999
ARCHITECTURE: 10mm ultra-wide
bandwidth transducer.
BACKGROUND: DITA claims it wanted
to build "the finest sounding, most
luxurious universal fit earphones
available today". They haven't
succeeded, but the Answer is still a
very good earbud.
PRO: If nothing else, the Answer is
the easiest to fit and most
comfortable to wear of the buds
here. The flat cylinder shape of the
enclosure makes it easy to wear in
bed, too. The single-driver design
means accurate, fast response. The
sound signature is clean, spacious,
open and very smooth.
CON: Unless you are a stickler for
absolute studio-monitor-like flatness,
the Answers might not sound all
that... fun. It's a nuanced thing, but in
reproducing music so accurately and
dispassionately, some of the emotion
can be lost. But really, it's the nittiest
of picks - and The Answer is not $400
inferior to its pricier competition.

ACKNOWLEDGE THE SOURCE
The earbuds in this roundup were
provided by Addicted to Audio (www.
addictedtoaudio.com.au). Make sure
you pair them with a quality source
capable of playing high-res files.

Australia’s venerable F/A-18s are
due for retirement. Could their
replacement, the F-35, be our last
crewed ﬁghter jet?

Fighter pilots have long been described as the
best of the best. As Tom Wolfe famously wrote,
only those with the “right stuff” can handle the
job. Now, it seems, the right stuff may no longer
be the sole purview of human pilots.
A pilot AI developed by a doctoral
graduate from the University of Cincinnati
has shown that it doesn’t just beat other
AIs, but also a professional fighter pilot with
decades of experience.
In a series of flight combat simulations, the
AI successfully evaded retired US Air Force
Colonel Gene “Geno” Lee, and shot him down
every time. Lee called it: “The
most aggressive, responsive,
by
COBY
dynamic and credible AI I’ve
MCD ONAL D seen to date.”
Geno knows the context for a

comment like that. He’s a former Air Force
Battle Manager and adversary tactics
instructor. He’s controlled or flown in
thousands of air-to-air intercepts as mission
commander or pilot. In short, the guy knows
what he’s doing. Plus he’s been fighting AI
opponents in flight simulators for decades.
He says this one is different. “I was
surprised at how aware and reactive it was.
It seemed to be aware of my intentions and
reacting instantly to my changes in flight
and my missile deployment. It knew how
to defeat the shot I was taking. It moved
instantly between defensive and offensive
actions as needed.”
The AI, dubbed ALPHA, was developed
by Psibernetix, a company founded by
University of Cincinnati doctoral graduate

Nick Ernest, in collaboration with the Air
Force Research Laboratory. According to
the developers, ALPHA was specifically
designed for research purposes in
simulated air-combat missions.
The secret to ALPHA’s superhuman

171

Number of F-35
Lightning II
stealth multirole
f ighters built by
t he US and i ts
contractors..

flying skills is a decision-making
system called a genetic fuzzy tree, a
subtype of fuzzy logic algorithms. The
system approaches complex problems
much like a human would, says Ernest,
breaking the larger task into smaller

subtasks, which include highlevel tactics, firing, evasion, and
defensiveness. By considering
only the most relevant variables,
it can make complex decisions
with extreme speed. As a result,
the AI can calculate the best
manoeuvres in a complex,
dynamic environment, over 250
times faster than its human
opponent can blink.
After hour-long combat
missions against ALPHA, Lee
says, “I go home feeling washed
out. I’m tired, drained and
mentally exhausted. This may
be artificial intelligence, but it
represents a real challenge.”

P OP SC I . C O M. AU

31

Next
Geeking Out

ELLEN
PAO

On Solving
-isms Within
the Workplace

As told to
M AT T GI LES

JAS O N H EN RY / THE NEW YORK TIMES/ R E D U X

After seven years of
working at Kleiner
Perkins, one of Silicon
Valley’s pre-eminent
venture-capital ﬁrms,
Ellen Pao felt that
bosses had passed her
over for promotions,
choosing instead lessqualiﬁed candidates.
So in 2012, she ﬁled a
gender- discrimination
lawsuit. Though she
didn’t win, her trial
helped expose the tech
industry’s persistent
lack of diversity and
frequent genderharassment issues.
She has since become
an ear and a voice for
others with shared
experiences. Here she
oﬀers insights on how
to create an inclusive
workplace in the
Valley—and beyond.

32

PO PUL A R S CI E NCE

AU GU ST 2 0 1 6

Next
Geeking Out

The trial was a moment of clarity for a lot of
people—for women who were experiencing
discrimination or harassment, or for men
and women of colour. Their experiences
may have been unique, but they all shared
common threads of bias, of unfair pay, of
fewer opportunities. The trial didn’t raise
brand-new issues, but it made it OK for
people to talk about them in a way that had
never happened before.

Whether it is being moved to a smaller
oﬃce, or being told to go take notes, or
being asked to wait to get promoted,
people told me experiences that they had
kept inside because they weren’t sure
what other people would make of it.
Change is uncomfortable, but I’ve
began to see some start-ups recognise
that diversity and inclusivity are good
things. They want to recruit more
women, more people of colour, and more
people who have diﬀerences. And there
is a natural ﬁ nancial message. McKinsey
& Co. has done research showing that
broad diversity can result in 35 per cent
better ﬁ nancial performance.
There is a wide range of things that
companies can do—from blind resumes
to referral bonuses for non-traditional
candidates to blind coding tests. In the

next 10 years, there will be even more
techniques and technologies that will
turn out to be successful at building
diverse and inclusive teams that lead
to ﬁ nancially successful companies.
The tech industry hasn’t moved as
quickly as I thought it would. If we can
solve it here, though, other industries
should be able to address these issues.
But this generation is more aware of
the glass ceiling. They’ve entered the
workplace with eyes open. You have
a generation of women and people
of colour and all kinds of underrepresented groups who could ﬁ nd
places where they might succeed
earlier on in their career, which then
helps them become more successful.
They got on that path earlier.
And that is inspiring.”

“This
generation
is a lot more
aware of the
glass ceiling.
They’ve
entered the
workplace
with eyes
open.”

36
Percent of
African-American
and Asian applicants
who “whitened,”
or changed,
their resumes,
per a 2016 study.

AUGUST 201 6

Next
Rethink

WOULD YOU LET A
ROBOT RUN YOUR LIFE?

J

ibo seems like a friendly little fellow. An
upcoming personal assistant type robot, he’s
basically a vaguely anthropomorphic bobblehead on a plinth. He has a screen for a face,
endearing animations, and can - as far as I can tell only really do the things Siri or Google voice search can
already do. And not that much more.
Limited as this $700 ﬁrst-gen personal bot may
or may not be, he’s the shape of things to come.
Make no mistake: homebots are the TVs of the next
decade. The ﬁrst batch will be basic and expensive,
but pretty soon people will be saying “what, you have
two homebots?” and next thing you know, you’ll be
carrying an AI in your pocket.
The promise of Jibo and robots like him is great
indeed. He can take care of all the boring day-to-day
organisational stuff. He can jump on your wiﬁ and
control home-automated devices like lights and the
AC. He can take pictures, place calls, order food,
manage your appointments, and entertain your
children. I think even tells time...
Right now, in the various YouTube videos, you can
all but hear Jibo’s gears grind as he processes even
the most basic enquiry. But within a few years, he’ll be
anticipating your every move. He’ll know that if you’ve
come home late from work three nights in a row, on
the fourth night you’re probably going to want to order
Indian from your favourite place. And so forth.
However, I anticipate homebots will become the
focus of some very curly
questions in the near
future. For instance, to
what extent does your
consent extend into
things the homebot
does? If I was, say,
a credit card or pay
TV provider, I might
bombard Jibo with
dozens of offers a
minute for the kind of
stuff his owner probably
wants. Probably.
If your homebot
signs you up to a
credit card based
on your existing
behaviour and data-

34

POP U L A R S CI E NCE

WILL JIBO SIT BY AS SOMEONE
BEATS THEIR PARTNER OR
PLANS A MURDER? OR WILL HE
CALL THE COPS ON HIS OWNER?

projected love of buying crap without ﬁrst earning the
money to afford it, can you later claim in bankruptcy
court that you never wanted the bloody credit card that
ruined you? After all, you didn’t sign on the line - the
homebot did, using the power of attorney or whatever
you gave it as part of the terms of its EULA.
Then there’s criminal activity. Homebots work
because they continually monitor their surroundings,
desperately hoping that someone, anyone, will say “hey
Jibo” and give their existence meaning. So they’ll watch
you embezzle company funds via an anonymous email
address and secret bank account - hell, you’ll probably
use them to do the dirty.
Or what about something less palatable? Will Jibo
sit by as one partner beats the hell out of the other? As
a parent abuses their children? As someone accesses
child porn online? Plans a murder? Or will he call the
cops on his owners?
(Just for clarity: I am not suggesting the Jibo you
can currently pre-order will do any of this. I am
imagining the more sophisticated true AIs that will
come in the decades ahead.)
Then there’s Jibo’s own welfare. When the UN
recognises your homebot as an “independent
sentient being” in a landmark 2045 ruling, will
people get prosecuted for the crime of neglect,
as in “neglecting to ever give their homebot
something meaningful and stimulating to do”?
If you watch the Jibo promo video right now, you
might think he’s a bit of a gimmick. But the only thing
missing from him is the “AI processor”. There will one
day be a plug-in component - probably some kind of
quantum computing core - that gives a device like Jibo a
simulated level of intelligence at least enough to pass as
self-aware to the average user.
Homebots could have enormous beneﬁt - they could
mark an effective end to social isolation for instance - but
they could also challenge the very foundation of our laws
and even morality.

okémon Go is dominating both the gaming and
news scene at the moment. It seems like a
day doesn’t go by in which one news outlet or
another posts a story about the game either
having positive or negative impacts on players. It’s
sensationalism of the basest sort, laying the blame for
accidents, muggings and even abductions on a game
rather than on the people involved in the incidents,
but this sensationalism, either positive or negative,
ignores the most interesting and most important aspect
of Pokemon Go – the mass market saturation of an
important technology: Augmented Reality.
Augmented Reality, the superimposition of a
computer generated image over the user’s ﬁeld of view,
is not a new technology. In various forms it has been
around for quite a while, with the ﬁrst AR head mounted
display, dubbed the Sword of Damocles, created by
renowned computer scientist Ivan Sutherland in 1968.
Despite the concept of AR being proven nearly 50
years ago, it wasn’t until recently that the technology
left the realm of the military and specialised commercial
applications and entered
the public, well, eye. Google
attempted to make the
technology mainstream
with Google Glass in 2013,
but thanks to privacy
considerations (and some
people with the glasses
Replace those rustic old
ruins with your street, and
th at trad e system wit h
n oth i n g, and you have
Poké mon Go in a nutshell.

36

PO PUL A R S CI E NCE

by
DA N I EL
W I L KS

POKÉMON GO IS AN
INCREDIBLY IMPORTANT
GAME AS IT PROVES THE
APPEAL OF AUGMENTED
REALITY TO A MASS MARKET.

being outright creepy) the technology was removed from
the market and sent back to development in 2015.
While there have been a number of games that have
utilised AR technology, the ﬁrst real push for mobile AR
gaming came from Sony in 2009 with the release of the
game Invizimals for the PlayStation Portable (PSP). The
game used the PSP camera to hunt the environment for
monsters that could then be fought through a number
of mini games. Despite the game being very similar to
what is now found in Pokémon Go, Invizimals never took
off, most probably because of the limited success (in
Australia and the US) of the PSP and the extra expense
required for the camera add-on.
Pokémon Go isn’t even the ﬁrst foray into AR for
developer Niantic. In 2013, the company released an AR
location-based game titled Ingress, in which players joined
one of two factions and fought to capture “portals” – usually
landmarks, monuments or other locations of cultural
signiﬁcance – in an effort to capture more territory than
the other faction (for more, see p.22). Much like Pokémon
Go, the game required players to travel around in order to
discover or retake portals. Although popular and still widely
played (data collected from Ingress was used to place
Pokémon gyms and Pokéstops in Pokémon Go), the lack of
the mass-market appeal of a hugely popular, long running
franchise limited Ingress’ overall reach.
Though ultimately fairly simplistic in terms of
gameplay, Pokémon Go is an incredibly important game
as it proves the appeal of Augmented Reality to a mass
market. Up until this point, the only real exposure AR
has had in the mass media is the occasional story
about Microsoft’s upcoming HoloLens headset and the
controversy around Google Glass. With Pokémon Go,
AR has arrived and you should expect to hear about the
format much, much more in the future.

ONE LOCATION
OVER ONE
HUNDRED
TOP HI-FI AND
AV BRANDS
The Australian Hi-Fi & AV Show is your chance to hear
ALL the world’s best Hi-Fi & AV in one place. New
technology and digital delivery to classic vinyl and glowing
valves – compare hundreds of hi-fi, headphone and home
theatre brands before you buy. Sit down and listen to the
world’s best systems – many valued in the hundreds of
thousands of dollars. Learn about the latest tech — how
to stream music around your home, how to turn your
computer into a high-end audio source, how to control
everything from smartphone and tablet.

“Amazing to see (and hear!)
all this great hi-fi in one
place. I want it all!”
Bernard from Geelong Victoria

“Great music and great
people – able to answer all
the technical questions I had.
Coming back next year!”
Morrisey NSW

EXCLUSIVE!
CLASSIC
VINYL
SESSION WITH
JOHN PAUL
YOUNG
IN PERSON

Live music, competitions, special
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chestergroup.org

Next
Tech Trend

THE OLYMPIC
VILLAGE OF
THE
FUTURE
TOKYO 2020 WILL BE THE
BEST EVER FOR SOCIETY
by
HEATHE R HANSMAN

Hosting the Olympics
can put serious strain on a
country’s infrastructure and
finances. In preparation
for the 2016 games, Rio
de Janeiro has dealt
with issues ranging from
sewage-filled lakes to an
uncompleted subway line.
In Sochi in 2014, hotels
went unfinished after the
Winter Olympics began—
the whole affair cost Russia
a record $51 billion. But
Japan, home of the 2020
games, wants to make
the event good for their
country and society. The
nation has done it before.
To host the 1964 Olympics,
Japan launched the
Tokaido Shinkansen bullet
train, which revolutionised
national transportation.
Drawing on the Japanese
sustainability concept of
mottainai (“don’t waste”),
Tokyo will use robot cars,
holographic displays, and
driverless taxis to enhance
society, which should
make the 2020 games
a global winner.

38

PO PUL A R S CI E NCE

HYDROGENPOWERED VILLAGE
The Tokyo Metropolitan
Government, which will create the
Olympic and Paralympic Village, has
earmarked $492 million to develop
hydrogen fuel cell cars and refuelling
stations around the sports complexes.
“After the completion of the games,
the village will be an environmentally
friendly residential district powered
by a next-generation hydrogen
system,” says Hikariko Ono, a
spokesperson for the games.

8K BROADCASTING
For spectators who won’t be in the stands, the
Olympic Broadcasting Service will be shooting
the entire Tokyo Games in 8K UHD—16 times the
resolution of standard high-def. Some viewers
don’t have to wait: As a trial run, OBS will ﬁlm
130 hours of Rio’s festivities in what it calls
Super Hi-Vision 8K. Japan’s national broadcast
station, NHK, has signed on to broadcast it.
Tune in to see athlete’s pores in all their
7,680-by-4,320-pixel glory.

AUG UST 201 6

HOLOGRAPHIC
INFORMATION
Most holograms (think
Tupac at Coachella)
are just digital images
projected on thin
screens and visible only
from certain angles.
But Mitsubishi Electric
has developed true
holographic technology,
projecting a 3D image
you can actually walk
around. The tech uses
a beam splitter and a
retro-reﬂective sheet
to make images appear
to ﬂoat. It won’t better
society, but these
holograms might just
be the coolest event
in Tokyo 2020.

BIOFUELED FLIGHTS
Companies like Airbus and United have tested
bio-fuelled ﬂights, powered by things like used
cooking oil and algae. But now, Boeing, All Nippon
Airlines, and others are investigating a range of
options, including inedible plants like a ﬂowering
house plant and an oil seed plant, and algae-based
sources. The biofuels require large amounts of
plant mass, so various Japanese companies have
constructed large-scale farms and algae cultivation pools to produce enough of the green stuﬀ to
power all of the games’ potential air traﬃc.

I L LUST RAT I O NS BY

Michael Brandon Myers

DRIVERLESS TAXIS
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe proclaimed that robo-taxis
would be present at the games. Tokyo-based Robot Taxi soon stepped
in to take orders. Initial ﬁeld tests for the cabs—which use a “Robovision” stereo camera to navigate and can be hailed by cellphone—
began this past March in Kanagawa Prefecture. But the technology
still needs some tweaks, like teaching the software to read maps.

P OP SC I . C O M. AU

39

AUG U ST 201 6

40

PO P U L A R S CI E NCE

*

BUT IT
WON’T SAVE
THE ICE CAPS.

D R A_ S C H WA RT Z /G E T T Y I M AG ES

Greenhouse gas gets all the attention. Most agree it is the main
cause of our warming planet. But scientists say black carbon, or
soot—which comes from diesel engines, coal-burning plants, and
open biomass incineration (among other forms)—is the nearest
runner-up, and the one most readily overlooked.
In addition to causing health issues that lead to millions of deaths
each year, black carbon absorbs light, mixes with water droplets
found within clouds, and settles on snow and ice to devastating
effect. “It darkens the landscape of the Arctic,” says Chris Cappa,
a civil and environmental engineering professor at the University
California at Davis. The once-pristine white surfaces become
smudged and reflect less solar radiation back out into space, which
“accelerates warming and melting at an alarming rate,” says Cappa.
Eliminating black carbon could stop about
40 per cent of global warming. It’s not hard to
by
“scrub” emissions at their source. And because
JEN
soot only stays in the air for weeks, there would be
SCHWARTZ
a near-immediate decrease in the planet’s heating,

buying us more time to replace
fossil fuels with clean energy.
But doing so would trigger a
second type of climate change.
When black carbon reaches the
atmosphere, it’s already mixed
with sulphur dioxide and other
organic matter. Those particles
actually reflect sunlight, causing
a “global cooling” effect by
preventing that solar radiation
from penetrating the lower
levels of the atmopshere. “You
can’t just turn off the black
carbon without turning off those
cooling effects too,” says Cappa.
Factor in the loss of the cooling
particles, and that 40 per cent
figure drops to about 25 per cent.
The technology to isolate
and filter out black carbon is in
its infancy, so for now, the trick
is choosing which black-carbon
emissions are most worth
reducing outright. We know that
open biomass incineration and
diesel engines have “more black
stuff relative to the other, cooling
components,” says Cappa.
Tackling those sources with
the existing tech would promote
the health of both us and Earth.

Next
Decoded

ZERO GRAVITY
PHARMACY
ASTRONAUTS WILL USE MOULD
TO GROW MEDICINE IN SPACE

On a family vacation to the California Space Centre in
Los Angeles a few years ago, medicinal chemist Clay Wang
had a disturbing thought: As we explore space, and travel
farther and farther away from Earth, a lot could go wrong.
Systems could fail. Hardware could break down. And what
about the crew? What happens if they get sick and run out
of medication a year or so into a three-year trip to Mars?
Drugs have an expiration date, and both radiation
and the vibrations of space travel might degrade them
more quickly. Wang thinks future Mars explorers
might rely on a revolutionary solution: growing their
own medicine en route. It’s a tactic that has been
theorised but never tested in space.
Wang, conveniently, runs a lab at the University of
Southern California that studies natural medicine.

Our dependable
medicinal moulds and
fungi will no doubt
behave in strange new
ways i n spa ce.

This past April, his lab sent specimens of
the soil fungus Aspergillus nidulans to the
International Space Station to see how it might
fare on a Martian odyssey.
The results are pending, but Wang is curious
to know whether the stresses of space activate
previously unknown genetic pathways in the
fungus. This could cause A. nidulans to generate
novel compounds and lead to new medicines
for Earthlings and astronauts alike. “It’s like a
factory where many of the machines have always
been switched off,” says Wang. “In space, those
machines might suddenly turn on for the first
time.” Once scientists better understand how the
space environment affects the fungus’s biology,
Wang’s hope is that astronauts could then
replicate the process to manufacture their own
drugs on the long journey to Mars.
Future Mars missions could carry a few
spores of several benevolent fungi and quickly
scale up. If explorers run out of penicillin, for
example, Ground Control could email the gene
sequences that cause the fungus to produce the
drug. Then an onboard DNA synthesiser would
write those codes into a lab-grown cell that
replicates until there are enough drugs to do
the job. That end goal is years away, but Wang
hopes his experiment will plant the seeds (or
spores) that grow into reality.
“Astronauts won’t have to worry about
resupply,” he says. “They’ll have a medicine
cabinet full of different strains to rely on.”

by
A NTHONY
FO R D HAM

P OP SC I . C O M. AU

41

UNMANNED AERIAL VEHICLES, OR SYSTEMS, OR WHATEVER YOUR
LOCAL REGULATOR WANTS TO CALL THEM, ARE HERE TO STAY.
DRONES ARE BIG BUSINESS, AND WILL MAKE SOMEBODY A LOT OF
MONEY VERY SOON NOW. THE ONLY TRICK IS FIGURING OUT EXACTLY
HOW TO MAKE THAT MONEY, HOW LONG ITâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S GOING TO TAKE, AND HOW
OBSTRUCTIVE THE GENERAL PUBLIC IS GOING TO BE ALONG THE WAY.
STO RY BY ANTHONY FORDHAM

42

PO PUL A R S CI E NCE

AU G U ST 2 01 6

P OP SC I . C O M. AU

43

DJI’s Inspire range costs from $3500$8000 depending on options. That might
be out of your budget, but for someone
wanting to start a business, it’s a fraction
of the cost of other aviation options.

hen drones-as-a-service company
Measure Australia was asked, by
a major mining concern, to ﬂy
a drone inside an ore conveyor
belt, they demurred. It was simply too risky - the metal
covering over the conveyor could block the radio signal,
and cause the drone to crash.
The mining company didn’t care. They wanted
footage of their conveyor belt, so they hired an
independent drone pilot instead. He ﬂew his $40,000+
pro grade drone into the conveyor, and sure enough, the
radio signal to his controller was blocked. The drone
crashed, the conveyor was damaged, and total costs of
the disaster were estimated at $5 million a week.
Such are the risks faced by Australia’s rapidly
expanding commercial drone services industry.
Usually, when a disruptive new technology hits the
big time, the really smart investors and backers have
made millions before everyone else even realises what’s
going on. Drones aren’t exactly like that. Everyone
seems to agree that they will be big - huge even business. It’s just a matter of ﬁguring out how the
industry is going to work.
CEO of Measure Australia, Mark Stevens, has a fairly
good grip on the problem. He, his son Aonghus, and a
select group of pilots, technology experts and investors,
have been working in this emergent industry since 2012.
“Drones are relatively cheap,” says Stevens. “It’s
easy for someone to go to a drone manufacturer and
buy a very capable system. But there’s a provision in
consumer law that says if you sell a product, your
customer has to have a reasonable expectation of being
able to operate it.”
Which is the problem with drones. You can sell a
man a really high-end drone with all sorts of features
and capabilities for $40,000 - a fraction of the cost of
operating an actual crewed aircraft - but if he gets it

44

PO P U L A R S CI E NCE

home and realises he has absolutely no idea how to ﬂy
the thing, and you won’t help him, well, turns out he
has grounds to sue.
“Measure Australia doesn’t sell drones,” says Stevens.
“We see our business as drones-as-a-service. You tell us
what outcome you’re looking for, and we’ll ﬁgure out a
solution. We aim to own the last 500 feet.”
Mark Stevens is of course referring to the mix
of datasets available to businesses from satellites,
aeroplane-based sensors, and actual ground-based
ﬁeldwork. Places where humans have to stomp through
muck, or drive slowly for hours, or simply can’t enter to
safely. Drones are unique in that they can get into areas
that would take humans days or even weeks to traverse.
The only trick is getting the rest of society to accept
these tiny, uncrewed ﬂying machines.
“After a series of devastating bushﬁres in WA,” says
Stevens, “we were perfectly positioned to ﬂy drones in
and assess insurance claims. Everything was perfect. But
then the local government popped up and told us we
couldn’t ﬂy into the area. Because they were worried the
residents would think the drones were UFOs.”

This is perhaps less of an irrational fear than you
might think. What exactly is a “drone”? Measure
Australia’s chief technology oﬃcer Aonghus Stevens
admits the deﬁnition isn’t exactly straightforward.
“In the CASA regulations, you’ll see references to
unmanned aerial systems (UAS), unmanned aerial
vehicles (UAV) and remote piloted aerial systems
(RPAS). They are interchangeable... a bit.
“The regulations even include model aeroplanes.
CASA mostly uses the term ‘UAS’, and the deﬁnition
is really about how the system will be used, not its
actual mission capability.”
This is because CASA draws a distinction between
hobbyist RC planes and, well, ﬂying things that are
used commercially.
“UAVs are commercial, UAS are not,” says Aonghus
Stevens. “But the deﬁnition of commercial is confusing.
We are on the phone to CASA all the time about it.”
Once, “commercial” used to mean ﬂying your drone,
taking pictures, and then asking for money. Now
though, CASA has extended this to, for instance, mining
companies using a drone to inspect pipelines for leaks,
or even just checking fencing or powerlines.

AUG UST 201 6

“In the more remote areas, we’re using drones to
monitor things, and CASA now considers that kind
of activity commercial, even though there’s no direct
payment,” says Aonghus Stevens.
Whatever the regulations, the industry itself
generally uses the term “drone”. It might not be strictly
correct - there are some who would insist the only true
drone is a fully-autonomous system with no human
operator - but it’s the word most people are using.
CASA, for its part, treats drones like any other
aircraft. “Pilots need licenses, based on the weight of
the system,” says Aonghus Stevens. There are ﬁxedwing drones that look like ordinary aeroplanes, rotary
drones that look like tiny helicopters, and of course the
ubiquitous “multirotor” system that’s so hot right now
in JB Hi-Fis and Harvey Normans across the country.
Multirotors often have four engines, but heavier
platforms can also have six or even eight.
“The classes are being reworked, but they are
based on weight,” says Aonghus Stevens. Systems
ranges from diminutive mini-drones weighing less
than seven kilograms, to serious airborne platforms
weighing over 25 kg.
“We think CASA is doing a good job,” says Aonghus
Stevens, of the organisation’s management of the
bewildering array of diﬀerent drone types in the
market right now. “But we are expecting and looking
forward to some big changes on the 29th of September,
especially for aircraft under two kilograms.”
Basically, CASA is looking at simplifying the
regulations for people operating drones that weigh less
than 2 kg. That means your uncle can get his drone for
Christmas and go and take a picture of a whale without
too onerous a burden of paperwork.
Right now, of course, even the owner of a $700
Parrot Bebop has to either limit their ﬂight to their
own property, or get the same sort of license as a
professional pilot. Which seems... a bit crazy.

The sheer accessibility of drones is something almost
no other new industry has had to deal with. In the
past, real disruption was, to some extent, moderated
by massive start up costs. Want to be an aerial
photography company? Well, you’ll need half a million
for a good plane, then hundreds of thousands more for
licensing and training and certiﬁcation.
“Back in 2012, just four years ago, a capable drone

THE RELATIVELY LOW COST OF
DRONES CAN ALSO BE A TRAP
SO THE FUTURE OF DRONES IS IN
SELLING DRONES AS A SERVICE.

would cost more than $500,000,” says Aonghus Stevens.
“And that drone would have fewer features than a
$4000 DJI Phantom today.”
But the relatively low cost of drones can also be
a trap. Measure CEO Mark Stevens tells of a mining
company in the Pillaga that spent $40K or more on a
drone, on the understanding it would have a 40 minute
operating time. Yet out there, in the unforgiving blast
furnace of Australia’s dead heart, it’s battery could
manage barely eight minutes. For that company, their
drone was almost useless.
Which is why Measure Australia believes the future
of drones isn’t in selling hardware, but rather selling
drones as a service.
“We view ourselves as a data company,” says Stevens.
“We ask clients ‘what outcome do you want’ and then
we work backwards.”
Stevens uses real estate as a key example. Many real
estate agents have realised the potential of drones in
selling prestigious properties - ﬂy the drone over the
house, get some great pics, package it all into a YouTube
video and watch the buyers ﬁght each other for the

P OP SC I . C O M. AU

45

T HE F U T U RE ( A ND P R ESENT) OF DRONES

opportunity to make an oﬀer.
And indeed some real estate companies will hire a
independent drone operator to get those shots. Yet
this guy will be less a photographer and more a drone
geek excited to make money while doing this favourite
hobby. He can ﬂy, says Stevens, but can he shoot
compelling video? The odds are against it.
“Often clients will pay a drone operator and be really
disappointed with the results,” Stevens says. Or they
will buy themselves a $2000 drone, ﬂy it around a
house, and wonder why the shots this consumer-grade
toy takes look so terrible.
In fact when it comes to real estate, Measure
Australia doesn’t want to provide a “drone ﬂying
service”. They want to provide awesome pictures of a
multi-million dollar property. The drone is merely a
means to an end. That’s the philosophy, they believe,
the industry really needs t0, well, take oﬀ.

Treating the drone as “just another camera” isn’t
to say that drones don’t represent an opportunity for
businesses and organisations to get an eye in the sky
for a fraction of the cost of a crewed aircraft.
For example, when it comes to surf life rescue, Mark
Stevens thinks crewed helicopters should be saved for
the task of actually rescuing people. They shouldn’t
waste time and fuel patrolling the coast looking for
drowning surfers and sharks.
“Surf live saving organisations can spend up to
six million dollars a year on [crewed] rotary ﬂights,”
Stevens says. “That buys them 460 hours” of helicopters
ﬂying up and down the coastline looking for trouble.
“We quoted them three million for 4300 hours of
constant surveillance,” he says. The idea would be that
a drone (or several drones) would do the overwatch,
and helicopters would be scrambled if anything did
actually go down. Including the drones, obviously.
This proposal represents a massive saving in fuel,
let alone the costs of pilots and other crew. This is the
real potential of drones: to do what humans would ﬁnd
tedious or impractical.
“Imagine a property with a thousand kilometres of
fencing or powerlines,” says Aonghus Stevens. “A couple
of guys in a 4WD might be able to drive that boundary
no faster than 30km/h because of terrain. A drone
could ﬂy the line autonomously, and be programmed to
report back only if it detected an anomaly.”
Before this potential can be realised, however, CASA
has to get its head around one very important concept operating drones beyond line of sight.
Right now, drone pilots must be able to see their
airborne systems. Only the military can ﬂy its drones
over the horizon and conduct operations while the
pilot sits in an air-conditioned shipping container on

46

POP U L A R S CI E NCE

CASA HAS TO GET ITS HEAD
AROUND ONE VERY IMPORTANT
CONCEPT: OPERATING DRONES
BEYOND LINE OF SIGHT

AU G U ST 2 01 6

Drones are an obvious fit for the mining industry.
They can fly into areas that might be too unstable
for humans, or even inspect demolition charges up
close. They donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t work underground yet though, since
control depends absolutely on rock-solid RF reception.

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T HE F U T U RE ( A ND P R ESENT) OF DRONES

IF PEOPLE WITH $1500 DRONES
CAN CAUSE SUCH HEADACHES
WHAT CHANCE DO WE HAVE OF
EVER GETTING FLYING CARS?
the other side of the world.
Measure Australia’s CEO Mark Stevens knows how
beyond-line-of-sight aﬀected the armed forces: he’s
already had a long career in the military.
Putting unmanned aircraft on the battleﬁeld was a
revolution. Military-grade drones, especially for recon,
have the same capabilities as Cold War era spy planes.
But they’re cheap and the most valuable component is
never at risk: the human pilot.
The use of drones in combat missions remains
controversial of course, but again, they mean pilots
don’t have to risk being shot down over enemy
territory... or friendly territory either.
Whatever your feelings on the morality of killing by
remote-control, we’re probably going to have to accept
that weaponised drones are here to stay.
“Drones transformed the military in a matter of
weeks,” says Mark Stevens. “And this will be transferred
to the commercial sphere at some point.”

Like all good entrepreneurs, the team at Measure
Australia identiﬁed that drones were going to be a big
thing, and positioned the company to beneﬁt from
that as early as possible. But, as various anecdotes
already show, it hasn’t all been smooth sailing.
“We did not anticipate it would take from 2009 to
2015 for things to really get moving,” says Mark Stevens.
He tells of endless meetings with mining bigwigs,
explaining to them how drone services could give them
new insight into mines and the infrastructure around
them. Slowly, companies came to realise that drones
could go quickly into open pit mines to inspect the
integrity of newly-blasted walls. They could patrol the
thousands of kilometres of private railroad, tailing the
autonomous trains as they trundle through the Pilbara.
Everything was falling into place. Stevens was even
about to board a plane to ﬂy to Perth and start the signing
process... but then the iron ore price collapsed, the “capex
phase” ended, and just like that the deal was oﬀ.
“It really highlights how important it is to be able
to respond quickly,” he says. The end of the mining
deal was a blow, but there’s still real estate, and an
increasing number of custom jobs. As both Stevens’
keep saying: it’s all about the data.

Rotary drones
look like
helicopters.
They have better
endurance than an
electric multirotor
but require a
skilled pilot

There will always be freelance pilots to contend with,
though. “Yes, we did used to be able to draw a distinction
between a ‘pro’ grade drone and a, I guess, hobbyist
drone,” says Aonghus Stevens. “But the line is blurring.
I mean, look at the DJI Phantom 4. That’s a hugely
impressive platform and it’s so quick and easy to deploy.”
In fact, the diﬀerence between the drone you or I
might buy and, say, a $180,000 law enforcement drone
like those used in California, is less about capability and
more about ease of use.
“So that law enforcement drone has much greater
endurance than something you could by,” says Aonghus
Stevens. “It can ﬂy for 60 minutes instead of 40. It can
also operate in the rain, has a camera with 30-times
optical zoom, sends its data over an encrypted network,
and it’s very easy to operate.”
When police are responding to an incident where
a little drone recon might be helpful, it’s not always
possible to dedicate an entire oﬃcer to manually ﬂy
the drone. Instead, these systems have much greater
automation in their controls - the “pilot” can just
tap on a map to send the drone to that location. No
thumbsticks, no fuss.
“That’s ideal for when there’s lots of stuﬀ going on in
a dynamic situation,” says Aonghus Stevens.

The confusion over drone accessibility doesn’t
just stop there. The market is little short of insane:
Measure Australia knows of at least 1200 drone
manufacturers trying to sell something right now,
whether it be entire platforms that can ﬂy as high as
200 metres and return to the operator at the touch a
button, or just upgraded carbon-ﬁbre props for the
rapidly growing drone racing circuit.
And yet, right now, buying and playing with a drone
is one of the easiest ways for an Australian to break the
law without even realising it.
“The regulations really aren’t clear for the hobbyist,”
says Aonghus Stevens. He explains that private owners
are only supposed to ﬂy on their own property, to

JUN E 201 6

a height of 120m. Of course, if you
Sydney North Shore beach on a s
days, you’’’ be able to count four o
about. None of them are suppose
the operator has a license. And re
getting permission from the local
And sure, down at the beach a d
more of a nuisance than a camera
But playtime can turn awkward v
“I was watching this beautiful
someone had shot over Watson’s
Stevens explains. “They ﬂew alo
and it was great. But then they ca
Botanic Gardens, over the Opera
south pylon of the Harbour Brid
problematic, because that’s restr
of the main helicopter ﬂight paths through the CBD.
It’s dangerous. It could cause a real disaster.”
Keen drone users have even put the lives of other
pilots directly at risk. Most hobbyists know they are
not allowed to ﬂy anywhere near an airport, but what
about out in the wilderness?
During severe bushﬁres in the US, the water bomber
planes had to be waved oﬀ certain ﬁre zones because
there were too many drones in the air for a safe
approach. People wanting to get amazing aerial footage

Serious operators will buy a system
where they can customise every thing
from the ty pe of propeller to the
camera’s gimbal and more.

e from being
afety oﬃcer
htweight
ces.
ware of this
slightly more
Music” sticker
kaging
includes pamphlets explaining where and how high
you can ﬂy your new toy.

ABOVE: The
definition of
drones also
includes fixedwing craft. These
can’t hover, but
can stay up in
the air for much
longer than a
multirotor. LEFT:
Mass production
continues to drive
down the cost of
a basic drone.

If nothing else, the regulatory headache created by
the general population now having access to $1500
ﬂying machines big enough to get in the way of general
aviation, has really highlighted how hard it would be to
license ﬂying cars.
Part of the problem is that every amateur drone
pilot thinks he (and it’s usually a he) is the only one.
he thinks that buying a drone is still a kind of edgy
thing to do. He’s the only one on the block with his
own flying machine.
Yet in Tamworth, NSW this past Christmas, keen
observers would have seen a DJI Phantom prowling
suburban back yards... looking for another (somewhat
lower-end) drone that a bunch of kids had lost earlier
that day. This kind of story - one of people just using
drones however they want - is being played over and
over again around the country. Who knows how nuts it
will get this Christmas.
The retailers don’t seem to care. Every electronics
shop has at least one giant display dedicated to drones,
and another to the action cameras you can strap onto
some of them. Models range from silly $150 toys that
come with a plastic hydrofoil for messing about in the
dam, to surprisingly serious machines that can take
amazing footage and stay in the air for as long as 25
minutes - and yet cost less than $1500.
Cheap electronic gyroscopes and RPM controllers
have made multirotor drones ﬁrst possible, and then
inexpensive. They beneﬁt science and industry in ways
we’re still continuing to discover.
What happens next? Probably further
miniaturisation and increased intelligence. Today’s
drones are like big awkward birds. Five years from
now, and CTOs like Aonghus Stevens won’t just be
marvelling at the capability of a $2000 drone. They’ll
also be marvelling over how so many features can be
packed into an aircraft the size of a big wasp.
We look forward to going for a buzz.

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49

When in crisis,
the human body
can slow its
metabolic clock
to the point of
appearing dead.
What happens
when doctors
start doing it
on purpose?
BY RENE EBERSOLE
I L L U S T R AT I O N
BY THE RED DRESS

P OP SC I . C O M. AU

51

52

PO PUL A R S CI E NCE

After falling
through the ice
(right) while
snowshoeing,
Kelly Dwyer
(above) was technically dead for
five hours until
doctors brought
her back.

T H I S A ND O PP O S I T E PAG E: C OU RTESY K E L LY DW YE R

Kelly Dwyer strapped on a pair of snowshoes and
set out to hike a beaver pond trail near her home in
Hooksett, New Hampshire. When the sun dropped
below the horizon hours later, the 51-year-old
environmental educator still hadn’t returned
home. Her husband, David, was worried. Grabbing
his cellphone and a ﬂashlight, he told their two
daughters he was going to look for their mum.
As he made his way toward the pond, sweeping
his ﬂashlight beam across the darkening winter
landscape, he called out for Kelly. That’s when he
heard the moans.
Running forward, David phoned their daughter
Laura, 14, and told her to call 911. His ﬂashlight beam
soon settled on Kelly, submerged up to her neck in a
hole of dark water in the ice. As David clutched her
from behind to keep her head above water, Kelly
slumped into unconsciousness. By the time rescue
crews arrived, her body temperature was dropping
below 15C and her pulse was almost too faint to
register. Before she could reach the ambulance,
Kelly’s heart stopped. The EMTs attempted CPR—a
process doctors continued for three hours at a
hospital in nearby Manchester. They warmed her
frigid body. Nothing. Even de-ﬁbrillation wouldn’t
restart her heart. Kelly’s core temperature hovered in
the low 20s. David assumed he’d lost her for good.
But Kelly’s life wasn’t over. A doctor rushed her
to nearby Catholic Medical Centre, where a new
team hooked her up to a cardiac bypass machine

that more aggressively warmed, ﬁltered, and
oxygenated Kelly’s blood, and rapidly circulated it
through her body. Finally, Kelly’s temperature crept
back up. After she’d spent ﬁve hours medically
dead, doctors turned oﬀ the bypass machine, and
her heart spontaneously began beating again.
Incredibly, Kelly Dwyer walked out of the hospital
two weeks later with only minor nerve damage to
her hands. Upon seeing her, the team that rescued
Kelly from the pond reacted as if they were seeing
a ghost. In some ways, they were. Five years later,
friends still call her “miracle woman.”
Bringing people back from the “dead” is no longer
science ﬁction. Typically, after just minutes without
a supply of freshly oxygenated blood, brain cells
start dying, and an irreversible and lethal process is
set in motion. But when a person becomes severely
cold before his heart quits, his metabolism slows.
The body sips so little oxygen that it can remain in
a suspended state for up to seven hours without
permanent cell damage. Thanks to improvements
in technology (like the cardiac bypass machine that
saved Dwyer’s life) and medical understanding, the
odds are getting better for coming back from the
edge. They are so good, in fact, that some doctors
and scientists are testing a bold new hypothesis:
What if you could induce a near-death state in
order to save lives? If it can be done, it could be a
game changer for saving some of the thousands of
Australians (and 200,000 Americans) who die each
year due to trauma injuries. By essentially pressing
“pause,” doctors might be able to buy precious time
that could mean the diﬀerence between life and
death. Suspended animation is no longer the stuﬀ of
Star Wars or Avatar.
A handful of scientists and medical experts
is now looking for ways to suspend life in order
to perform surgeries without the threat of a
trauma patient bleeding to death, or to prevent
tissue damage during the treatment of cardiac
events. Some aim to pump ice-cold saline solution
into patients’ veins. Others are searching for a
suspended-animation drug. The US Department of
Defence too is heavily involved, with the hope that
thousands of servicemen and servicewomen could
beneﬁt as well: Ninety percent of war casualties
result from bleeding out on the battleﬁeld. In
2010, it launched a $34 million initiative called
Biochronicity—an interdisciplinary research project
to ﬁgure out how to manipulate the human clock.
“The goal is to examine the way our bodies know
that time is progressing,” explains Col. Matthew
Martin, a 48-year-old active-duty trauma surgeon
whose research is funded through Biochronicity. The
battleﬁeld application would be the slowing down or
the stopping of time, making a wounded soldier able
to survive longer—or even survive indeﬁnitely—“so
that we can get somewhere to treat the injury,” says
Martin, “and then reverse that suspended state.”

AU G U ST 201 6

By essentially pressing “pause,” doctors could buy time
that could mean the difference between life and death.

D

r. Mark Roth’s oﬃce at the 15-acre
Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research
Centre in Seattle is crammed with
boxes of newspaper clippings and
journal articles about people who
came back from the “dead.” There is a
skier in Norway, a toddler in Saskatchewan, and two
ﬁshermen who capsized in the Gulf of Alaska—all of
whom had ﬂatlined in the freezing cold.
“I’ve been a student of these cases for 20 years,”
Roth tells me. At 59, Roth ﬁts the mould of a mad
scientist—with white hair that stands straight up,
and a tendency to wave his hands while rattling
on about metabolic reactions and the periodic
table. He is also the winner of a MacArthur “Genius
Grant” for his work manipulating the biological
clocks of small ﬁsh and garden worms. He is widely
recognized as a pioneer in the pursuit of using
suspended animation in trauma treatment.
Hunched over a microscope, in a burgundy T-shirt
with matching Converse All Stars, he invited me to
take a look at a petri dish bustling with tiny, hoursold zebraﬁsh. “Because they’re transparent, you
can see their hearts beating and the blood moving
about the tail,” he says. “This is the core of our own
animation—the heart and blood ﬂow. I’ll turn it oﬀ
and on like a light switch. We’re going to take away
the oxygen and alter their animation. We’re going to
make a diﬀerent kind of air.”
Using a clear tube, Roth began piping nitrogen into
a transparent box containing the petri dish. “We’re
going to let that sucker go all night,” he says. “The air
we’re breathing is what’s in there now, but in time,
this whole system will become straight-up nitrogen,
which will eventually get to these creatures and turn
them oﬀ. In the morning, we’ll put them back into the
room air, and they’ll reanimate.”

Then Roth prepped a similar experiment—
this one to show the eﬀects, rather than the
plausibility, of suspended animation. Taking two
petri dishes of nematodes at precisely the same
stage of development, he placed one dish in his
nitrogen box and left the other on a lab bench. His
hypothesis: The gassed worms’ metabolism should
gradually slow until they’re essentially suspended
in time, while the fresh-air siblings should keep
getting bigger. Because nematodes grow quickly,
his theory would be proved or disproved by
tomorrow. Think of it as the worm equivalent
of the movie Alien, in which the crew enters a
suspended “hypersleep” state in pods in order to
endure a long interstellar journey without ageing.
Like those pods, Roth’s nitrogen box suspends his
nematode crew in metabolic stasis for the night.
Up until the early 2000s, Roth’s suspendedanimation experiments were conﬁned to the scale
of tiny creatures, such as worms and ﬁsh. Then one
night he was watching the science documentary
series Nova on PBS. The show featured a cave in
Mexico that caused spelunkers to pass out because
of an invisible hydrogen-sulﬁde gas.
“If you breathe too much of it, you collapse,” says
Roth. “It’s called ‘knock-down’—you appear dead.
But if you are brought out from the cave, you can
be reanimated without harm. I thought: ‘Wow! I
have to get some of this!’”
After exposing mice to 80 parts per million of
some of that gas at room temperature, Roth found
he could induce a suspended state that could later
be reversed by returning the mice to regular air,
with no neurological harm—just like the spelunkers
in Mexico. For Roth, it was a breakthrough. The
medical community immediately took notice, seeing
his work’s potential for treating heart-attack victims
and cancer patients. The $500,000 MacArthur grant
followed soon after.
Since then he’s been tinkering with compounds
found in other deadly gases, kept under lock and
key in a nearby lab room with tightly monitored
security cameras and alarms. “These gases will
kill you,” Roth says. “Selenide, carbon monoxide,
cyanide—you could be dead in two minutes.”
But they also might save your life some day.
Roth has identiﬁed four compounds (sulphur,
bromine, iodine, and selenium) that he now calls
“elemental reducing agents,” or ERAs. These naturally
exist in small amounts in humans and can slow a
body’s oxygen use. Roth wants to develop an ERA as
an injectable drug that can, for one, prevent what’s
called a reperfusion injury—tissue damage that can
occur after doctors halt a heart attack. This happens
when normal blood ﬂow resumes; the sudden rush of
oxygen can permanently damage heart cells, leading
to chronic heart failure (the leading cause of death in
the world). Roth’s current research in pigs shows that
if he injects an ERA before the blockage is removed,

Roth has identified four compounds that naturally
small amounts in humans and can slow a body’s o

it’s possible to keep the heart muscle from being
destroyed in reperfusion.
“We’ve shown that you can intravenously inject
sodium iodide into a patient, creating a 75 per cent
reduction in the damage that would be done to
the heart during standard care,” he says. “You can
preserve your heart from dying by temporarily
slowing it down.” Roth recently started a private
company called Faraday Pharmaceuticals, and
hopes to begin experimenting with his ERAs in
human heart-attack patients in early 2017.
In Faraday’s oﬃces, about a ﬁve-minute walk
from Roth’s lab at Fred Hutchinson, I found CEO
Stephen Hill, a former surgeon, was tying up a
few loose ends before catching a ﬂight to North
Carolina. He’d accepted the job in September
2015 after meeting Roth and talking about the
potential for tapping into the natural biology that
could save critically ill patients. “One of the things
he said to me,” Hill recalls, “was, ‘If you took dead
people and gave them state-of-the-art therapy,
how many of them would recover?’”
It was a strange question, of course, because death
isn’t something one “recovers” from (and neither Hill
nor Roth are in the business of resurrection). But
thinking of death as something malleable excited
them both. “There are circumstances in which it
might be necessary to alter the way the body utilises
oxygen,” Hill says, “causing damaged tissues to
temporarily ‘hibernate’ rather than permanently die.”
Hill and Roth say that ERAs could one day be used
for a range of medical conditions, including organ
and limb transplants. Their ﬁrst target, though, will
likely be patients with heart attacks undergoing
procedures to restore coronary-artery blood ﬂow.
Other emergency traumas, such as gunshot wounds,
are promising candidates for suspended animation.
And in fact, a group of medical experts on the East
Coast already have the green light to do human trials
on patients with such traumatic injuries, using a
diﬀerent time-slowing technique.

r. Sam Tisherman hates the phrase
“suspended animation.” As director
of the Centre for Critical Care and
Trauma Education at University of
Maryland’s school of medicine in
Baltimore, he prefers “emergency
rvation and resuscitation” (EPR).
oesn’t have that sci-ﬁ appeal,” he says. “But on
te side, you might say EPR could be the new
e want to preserve the person long enough to
he bleeding and resuscitate him.”
like Roth’s method, Tisherman’s approach is to
atients into a hypothermic state, essentially
ing, intentionally, the same state that Kelly
r was in. To do that, he replaces blood in the
with freezing-cold saline solution, quickly
reducing the patient’s core temperature to a frigid
10 to 12 degrees Celsius. It sounds extreme, but if
it works, it could be a lifesaver—especially in a
city that just suﬀered its second deadliest year for
homicides (344 in 2015).
Routine care for trauma victims with injuries
such as gunshot wounds typically involves
inserting a breathing tube, and then using large
intravenous catheters to replace lost ﬂuids and
blood while a surgeon desperately attempts to
repair the damage before the patient’s heart fails.
“It’s a race against time,” Tisherman says, “and these
endeavours often don’t work. Only 5 to 10 per cent
of people in cardiac arrest from trauma survive—
your chances of living are pretty slim.”
Inducing a hypothermic state could buy
surgeons as much as an hour to operate. Afterward
they could resume blood ﬂow and gradually
rewarm the patient.
Tisherman and his colleagues have spent more
than two decades perfecting their procedure in
animals. They’ve had such success that in 2014,
the US Food and Drug Administration gave them
the go-ahead for the ﬁrst human trials to begin
at UPMC Presbyterian Hospital in Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania. Tisherman won’t reveal whether
any patients have yet been operated on, but the
trial remains open. If human patients follow the
success of the animal studies, their chances of
survival could double.
“If we take what’s now 5 to 10 per cent and make
it 20 per cent, that’s a big change,” Tisherman says.
“That’s a game changer.”
Of course, saving patients in hospitals full
of cutting-edge equipment is one thing. Saving
them on the battleﬁeld, where the nearest
facilities could be hundreds of kilometres away, is
another. That’s the challenge that plagues—and
motivates—Matthew Martin, the active-duty
surgeon. After four tours in Iraq and Afghanistan,
Martin is trying to achieve the same results as
Tisherman—without extensive equipment that
would be impossible to bring to the front lines.

AU G U ST 201 6

That means using chemicals—not cold—to slow
the body’s clock.
“The question is,” says Martin, “Can we decrease
the person’s demand for blood so even for a period
of time, he actually doesn’t need blood ﬂowing?
That would be the ultimate goal.”
On breaks from performing surgeries, Martin
conducts research from his home base at Madigan
Army Medical Centre in Tacoma, Washington.
There he examines the physiological eﬀects of
an experimental drug on pigs as they undergo a
simulated major trauma with bleeding.
“The goal is to create ‘hip-pocket therapy,’” he says,
“where a medic could carry the drug in his bag and
whip out a syringe for a severely injured soldier.
He could inject this drug and start the process of
suspended animation, giving the soldier more time
to get to a surgical facility.”
He and his colleagues have identiﬁed a series
of enzymes known as PI 3-kinase, which helps
regulate metabolism. They also found a drug
that controls the activity of those enzymes
and is already in clinical trials as a potential
cancer treatment. Martin’s early data suggests
that administering the drug at the moment of
ischaemia—when blood ﬂow to the heart becomes
inadequate—can slow down the metabolism
without harming the animal.
For Martin, the sense of urgency isn’t just
scientific; it’s personal. Such a drug might have
saved the first patient (we’ll call him Private X)
who died on Martin’s watch, in 2007, when he was
the chief of trauma at a combat-support hospital
in Baghdad. Arriving with a group of other
soldiers and civilians who had been ravaged
by an improvised explosive device, Private X’s
leg was mangled. Shrapnel had penetrated his
abdomen, one of his lungs was bruised, and he’d

Doctors are
experimenting
with machines
to replace blood
with cold saline.

Medics at field
hospitals like this
one in Kandahar,
Afghanistan, have
little time to save
trauma patients.

suffered multiple fractures of his ribs. After
Martin and his team operated, Private X seemed
stable enough for transfer.
But as soon as medics wheeled him into the ICU,
everything went wrong. The soldier’s oxygen levels
suddenly dropped, and internal bleeding made its
way back into his bruised lung. Shortly after, he
went into cardiac arrest. This time, Martin’s team
couldn’t save him.
“In the US, with access to good hospitals, there
are some high-tech options to stop the lung bleeding
from the inside.” Martin says, “But they were not
available. I remember just standing at the bedside
feeling completely helpless.”
Meanwhile, back at Mark Roth’s lab in Seattle,
he’s likewise hoping the answer to stalling time lies
within a portable, injectable drug. Though ERAs
might face some challenges in the FDA approval
process, the eventual applications could be huge.
“When you believe you’ve found a hammer, ﬁrst
you have to see if you can hit a nail into the wood,”
he says. “Then, if you build the utility and value,
other people are going to come along later and build
all sorts of things. That’s the ﬁeld of dreams.”
A day after putting his nematodes to sleep, Roth
returned to his lab to check on their progress. As
expected, the little worms that spent the night in
the nitrogen chamber hadn’t grown but were easily
brought back to life when exposed to fresh air. At
the same time, the ones left out on the table had
grown noticeably larger. Soon they would have
babies of their own.
It’s a far cry from saving a human trauma
patient. But witnessing those tiny worms
“resurrected” under the white light of Roth’s
microscope, it was hard not to feel some of the
frenetic enthusiasm that drives him. For those
worms, time had stood still—but for me, I felt I’d
just seen a glimpse of the future.

P OP SC I . C O M. AU

55

AU G U ST 20 16

THE SCieNCE OF

HE
RO
een winning
and losing is razor-thin—a hundredth of a second,
a fingernail length over the finish line, a momentary
lapse in concentration. So it's no wonder Australia
isn't the only country to invest a disproportionately
huge amount of money into our Olympic athletes.
Here's some rare insight into just how far Team
USA is willing to go bring home gold from Rio.
It should come as no surprise to the rest of the
world that the country that brought you Silicon
Valley is now turning athletic training on its head.
by W I L L COCK R E L L

SWIMMING

HIGH-SPEED
MOTION CAPTURE >>
In swimming, form is just as crucial as force. Getting the
smallest detail—even the angle of your ankle—just right is
an obsession for the elite because it can mean the difference
between podium and punching water. To help the pros,
video analysis is now an indispensable training tool. “Before,

>

PH OTO I LLU ST RAT I O NS BY

Graham Murdoch

N AT H A N A D R I A N

THREE GOLD MEDALS

The Tech
Video software, developed by BMW, picks up LEDs on
the swimmer's body, tracking his every move down to
the angle of his toes, and renders it in 2D images.
How I t He lps

The images let the athlete study his form in minute
detail and perfect even the tiniest inconsistencies,
which can shave crucial seconds off his lap time.

HE
RO
eS

THE SWIM TEAM
USES CRASH-AVOIDANCE
TECHNOLOGY, MADE
BY BMW, TO CAPTURE,
MEASURE, AND ANALYSE
EVERY ANGLE, THRUST
AND ERRANT BEND IN
A SWIMMER’S FOOT.

58

PO PUL A R S CI E NCE

diving into the pool with the LED sensors stuck to his body.
Though he's ostensibly helping Mark beta-test the system,
he's capturing lots of useful information about his own
technique, essentially gaining a great feedback loop.
“One of the things I’m able to see,” he says, “is the
degrees’ difference of my spine line. I noticed the amount
of movement I had through my upper chest compared with
guys who were consistently beating me. It’s made a marginal
improvement. But marginal is exactly what we’re looking for
at this point. This is going to be huge in understanding how
we maintain momentum.”
Eventually the team hopes to feed video analysis to a
poolside tablet in real time, letting coaches make micro
adjustments to an athlete's form on the spot. But Adrian
isn’t waiting for the finished product to get a leg up.
“I like to analyse, I like to understand why things
work,” he says. “I had never before looked at my dolphin
kick with that type of granular analysis. In swimming, if
you can make yourself more efficient without expending
more energy, that’s free money.”

SOCCER

4
HIG H-T ECH
T RA IN ING
S ECRETS O F
O LYMP IA NS

1.
Vibrat i n g
Su its

The MotivePro
suit—developed
by researchers
at Birmingham
City University
in the UK—helps
gymnasts perfect
their gainers and
arabesques by
vibrating when it
detects a less-thanperfect manoeuvre.

SATELLITE-GUIDED
SUPERTRACKING >>
Convincing the US women’s soccer team that it needs
an edge in Rio is like telling 1992 Michael Jordan he should
practice his jump shot. With three World Cup trophies and
four Olympic gold medals to its name, the Women’s National
Team is the most dominant in soccer history—male or
female. And they’re favoured to win again.
This time, however, the team will rely on advanced
technology, in the form of GPS tracking devices, to provide a
boost. Thanks to the miniaturisation and power of sensors, it
captures several metrics on every player on the field, down
to speed, lateral movements, and impacts. That specificity
empowers the team’s trainers to tailor workouts and
recovery programs—both of which are crucial to improving
performance—to each individual.
“We’ve always developed very talented players,” says
centre back Becky Sauerbrunn, the team’s defensive anchor.
“But at the global level, other teams are catching up. So
we’re trying to raise the bar, and that’s where cutting-edge
tech comes in.” It’s Women’s Soccer 2.0.
Developed by athletic monitoring company, Catapult, the
system works similarly to consumer tracking technology.
It uses sensors that monitor motion at set intervals. But
this system—used by only a handful of elite athletes and
various NBA and NFL teams—has way more processing

we literally just used the coach’s eyeball,” to fix alignment,
strokes, and kicks, says Nathan Adrian, a three-time gold
medallist gunning for number four in Rio. “Now I strap LEDs
on my body, and software does the analysis. The setup can
be carried around in a suitcase.”
Engineers at BMW helped develop the portable technology
exclusively for the US National Swim Team. Instead of
sensing a car drifting into your blind spot and helping to
prevent a crash, BMW programmed the system to track the
movements of a swimmer’s stroke with precision. Software
then translates those movements—every thrust, stroke, or
errant angle of the foot—into data.
Here's how it works: Adrian sticks LED's on his body,
which are then picked up on high-speed video as
he swims. Algorithms translate those movements into
useful data coaches can then act on. Capturing and
translating that data, says Peter Falt, director of creative
consulting for the BMW's California-based Designworks,
was “no small feat” for the engineers, designers, and
programmers who built the system. It forced them, says
Falt, to work in what were—to them at least—“harsh
conditions” (underwater), and to track and analyse some
very “fast-moving objects” (world-class swimmers).
One of the greatest 50- and 100-metre freestyle
swimmers in the world, Adrian has competed in two
previous Olympics and has watched the tech that most
swimmers use, like slowed-down underwater video
analysis, become more precise. But BMW’s motion-capture
registers more nuanced movements.
The system translates the
data into 2D renderings
that can be dissected down
to the imperfect bend of
a swimmer’s toes. That
gives swimmers a level of
feedback they never had.
The swim team uses
these renderings specifically
to assess and improve one of
the sport’s most important
moves: the dolphin kick—the
first few undulating full-body
motions a swimmer makes
after diving in, or coming off
the wall after a turn, and
the moment of maximum
underwater momentum.
Getting more from that kick is key. “Focusing this technology
on the dolphin kick was a milestone,” says Russell Mark, the
team’s high- performance consultant. “It is a huge weapon.
Everyone takes one or two kicks off the wall. But to be able to
take seven, eight, even nine good kicks? That’s really using it.”
Now, when Adrian executes a perfect dolphin kick at
practice, trainers can turn the data into a baseline to tell
other swimmers how to replicate it. “We know who’s good at
the technique,” Mark says. “It’s about figuring out how we can
get more of our athletes to be like that.”
In early March, Adrian tweeted a short video of himself

AUG U ST 201 6

B EC K Y SAU E R B R U N N
One Gold Medal
The Tech

Trainers use high-speed tracking software, OctimEye S5,
to capture several metrics for each of 11 on-field players,
down to speed, lateral movement, and impact.
How It Helps

These metrics let coaches tailor each player's workout
and recovery programs so that a defender who hits hard
gets a different routine than a sprinting striker.

HE
RO
eS

speed, allowing it to measure what was once considered
unquantifiable: how hard you hit or get hit, and whether you
favour one side of your body over another. “The sampling
frequency on the old units was once every second,” says
Dawn Scott, the team's fitness and sports science coach.
“In soccer, you could have changed direction three or
four times in a second. This thing picks up every single
movement and quantifies it.”
The palm-size unit fits into a small pocket sewn into a
players’ sports bra, between shoulder blades, where the
higher position allows it to pick up a stronger satellite signal.
The increased accuracy
allows for a detailed
record of what each
of the 11 players does
during practice, or in a
game. Now a striker can
know how long she was
running—and how fast.
A defender can find out
how many times she was
tackled—and how hard
she hit the ground.
— D E F E N S I V E C E N T R E BAC K ,
This is especially
B EC K Y SAU E R B R U N N
useful for players in
positions where exertion
levels are hard to
quantify using a heart rate monitor alone. “As a defender,
how much ground I cover isn’t up to me,” says Sauerbrunn.
“I’m defending against a forward, so her movement
determines my movement.” So she may cover less ground
than a striker, and get her heart rate up less often in some
games, but she may make or take more tackles, which
can wear her down just as much as a sprint. “The GPS can
actually measure things like how many times I go for an
aerial battle,” she says. All that extra data gives coaches a
fuller picture of each player.
It also gives trainers a fuller picture of each player's
game exertion, also known as their “load.” Each player’s
load data influences an often-overlooked factor for elite
athletes: recovery.
By watching each player’s numbers in real time during
practices, Scott can monitor load thresholds that, if
crossed, will render the player ineffective in upcoming
matches. The coach can then tell her to take it easy—or
maybe pull her from practice altogether.
“With the Olympics coming up, we have only two days
of rest between games,” says Sauerbrunn. “Higher loads
mean you’re more at risk for muscle fatigue, which leads
to strains and pulls. But you can’t simply compare one
player’s load with another’s.”
Eventually the technology may capture ever-finer
metrics, like skin temperature and core temperature,
lactic-acid levels, and even sleep cycles. “That would be
phenomenal,” says Sauerbrunn. “Dawn likes to call it ‘the
aggregation of marginal gains’— what can make us that
tenth of a per cent better? Cutting-edge tech like this is
what will continue to keep us a powerhouse program.”

Exposure to a cryo
chamber’s nearly
minus 130° C
temperatures for
just two to three
minutes may reduce
inflammation and
lead to a shorter
recovery time for
athletes of any sport.
However, there have
been reports of users
getting frostbite.

Fencer Miles Chamley-Watson has a chink in his
plastron: He’s easily distracted. In a fast-twitch sport of
thrusting and parrying, the slightest lapse in focus means a
blade at your thorax. Luckily, there’s an app for that.
Chamley-Watson’s official sponsor, Red Bull, employs
experts who study stubborn weaknesses in their athletes,
and find unique ways to hack them. In Chamley-Watson’s
case, they turned to neuroscientist Leslie Sherlin, who
created an app-based mental-training tool. Sherlin has
worked with big-wave surfers and eSports athletes, and has
devised a mental training “game.” The app was calibrated
to suit Chamley-Watson’s needs. “Your brain has different
electrical signatures, whether you’re focused, concentrating,
drowsy, relaxed, whatever,” Sherlin says.
To fine-tune an athlete’s focus, the app works like a video
game—and Chamley-Watson’s brain is the joystick. Sherlin's
team first identified the electrical signature of the fencer's
brain in a state of focus. Then they calibrated a game so
the same signature would trigger the movements of an onscreen avatar, a wing-suit flier.

AUGU ST 2 0 1 6

D ECAT H L O N

<< DATA ANALYTICS

AS H TO N E ATO N

I A N WALTO N / G ET TY IM AG ES FO R IA A F

World Record Holde r

Wearing a sensor-studded headset, Chamley-Watson
zeroes in on a feeling of focus to guide his avatar on an iPad
or iPhone screen, and thus boost his concentration skills.
Our sense of focus is generally outside our awareness, so
by moving his avatar, Chamley-Watson can learn to harness
that feeling and thus better control it. “It’s a game changer
for me,” says Chamley-Watson. “I think I have the physical
aspect over everyone in the world. But mentally, I need an
edge. I don’t think anyone’s doing what I’m doing. I don’t think
people even know what it is.”
Focus isn't every athlete's weakness, and Sherlin's team
can calibrate accordingly. For instance, a surfer might use
his game to improve relaxation, while an NBA forward
might use it to sharpen situational awareness.
As for Chamley-Watson, it doesn't matter if he achieves
Kasparov-level focus—he is a distracting presence on the
fencing piste. Tatted-up, with bleached-blond hair, the
193-cm New Yorker doesn’t fit the fusty stereotypes of his
sport. In 2013, with superhuman reach and the reaction
speed of a mongoose, he became the world champion.
Nevertheless, recognising the exact second to strike is as
crucial as striking itself, and Watson says everything from a
referee's call to the crowd can throw him.
Still, Sherlin can see from the raw data why ChamleyWatson is favoured to win in Rio. “Miles has really great
reaction speed,” says Sherlin. “He processes information
very quickly, and he doesn’t make a lot of mistakes.” Now
Chamley-Watson’s opponents will know who to call to help
them relax after they lose.

3.
Tra in in g i n
a Submarine
Tes t in g Ta n k

To perfect their
boating skills
in a controlled
environment,
British kayakers
and canoeists
train in an enclosed
270-metre pool
owned by defencetechnology firm
QinetiQ, normally
used to test scalemodel submarines.

It’s hard enough to excel in one sport—but ten?
Decathlete Ashton Eaton, who won gold in London, is one
of those rare specimens who can. He outruns, out-jumps,
out-throws, and outlasts just about anyone on the planet.
A master of body mechanics, from javelin throwing to
pole vaulting, he, like all athletes, studies his every micro
movement in order to win—cataloguing and analysing each
foot plant and finger wrap. But he also pays attention to
how he feels each time. And he records it all with some
technology he bought in the App Store.
The first would be familiar to any 12-year-old who’s
kept a diary. It’s called Day One, a $4.99 journalling app
for smartphone or iPad. In it, Eaton logs his every training
nuance, recording his results and his sensations. “The
secret is being able to connect a feeling with the hard
data from a performance,” he says. “For instance, I’ll do a
shot-put rep in practice and I’ll feel a certain way about
it. If I have a good feeling and the shot put goes far, that’s
a strong connection I want to be able to make later.” The
app’s search feature lets Eaton instantly comb through
years of workouts and personal bests to find each micro
adjustment that led to a breakthrough. He refers to his
method as “fast data storage and retrieval.”
“I could run a 250-metre workout and then look at my
time from the same day a year earlier,” he says. “And I can
designate tags for running, shot put, javelin, or high jump,
and see how many workouts of that type I’ve done.”
When Eaton needs to capture crucial intel in real
time, he uses a US$120- to US$500-a-year ($160-$660)
subscription-based app called Coach’s Eye. It records his
moves on an iPhone, including voice notes, drawing on
freeze-frame images, or even measuring the angle of, say,
Eaton’s elbow. It also has a scrubbing feature—the ability
to scan in slow motion, backward and forward, and to
examine micro movements. “We tend to break movements
into three phases: the start, middle, and finish,” says Eaton.
But even within those movements, his coach breaks it
down into smaller phases. “So it’s great being able to drag
your finger on the screen and really see in each frame a
more technical aspect of what you’re doing,” he says.
Eaton then learns from what he sees and makes
adjustments to his form on the spot. It’s a technological
leap from when the 28-year-old athlete was a kid, watching
athletes on TV and trying to mimic their movements the
best he could. “I was never quite sure how close I got,”
says Eaton. “YouTube wasn’t even around, and we never
did any of our own videoing back then.” Now that the best
movements to mimic are his own (on a good day), he’ll
know exactly how close he gets. And it’s a lot easier than
trying to take a selfie while throwing a javelin.

P OP SC I . C O M. AU

61

HE
RO
eS

GW E N J O R G E N S E N

World Triathlon Series Champion

The Tech

The Rio bike course is viewable in 360 degrees
through a Samsung Gear VR headset. It lets
Jorgensen see each facet of the course, even
looking around corners.
How I t He l ps

Jorgensen gains a near-muscle-memory
knowledge of the terrain and can game
out her strategic responses.

AU GU ST 2 0 1 6

T R I AT H L O N

<< VIRTUAL

REALITY RACING
Gwen Jorgensen’s secret training tool isn’t her $10,000
road bike—it’s her mind. As in when she kicks back and
closes her eyes. “I use mental visualisation to prepare for
races,” says Jorgensen, who at 30 is a two-time worldchampion triathlete. The trend in visualisation training has
taken hold in the top ranks of elite athletes. So Jorgensen
spent this summer concentrating, via virtual reality, on the
rutty streets of Rio’s Copacabana neighbourhood. “Rio is a
very tough bike course,” she says. “There are big hills, and
there’s a technical descent that will be a major factor.”
Jorgensen's sport is among the most gruelling on the
planet, covering swimming (1.5 km), running (10 km), and
cycling (40 km). To perfect her form, her trainers brought
in virtual-reality pioneer Joe Chen. He is a former product
lead at Oculus—and
now at Vrse.works,
the production house
that makes VR movies,
and VR content for
big media companies.
Chen flew to Brazil,
and attached a bunch
of GoPros to the hood
of a car, matching it
to the eye height of a
cyclist. “Then we just
drove the course,”
capturing it in 360
degrees, he says. He
then converted the
entire thing to an
MPEG viewable on a
Samsung Gear VR.
Jorgensen now uses it to follow the entire bike route, or to
play short clips of isolated sections that she can study in
detail. In other words, Rio came with her.
And it's a 24/7 companion. “Wherever I am traveling in
the world,” says Jorgensen, “I can put on the goggles and
look at this course—look left, look behind me, look right—
and see every little nuance.”
Training with VR, it turns out, is in some ways even
better than a real test ride. “It’s completely different than
memory,” she says, “which often fails me.”
Jorgensen is relatively new to the triathlon, and
to cycling in particular. A former CPA, she had been a
longtime runner and swimmer when she decided six years
ago to add cycling to her skill set. Two years after going pro,
she qualified for the 2012 Olympics. But during the London

This futuristic
pod (developed by
CVAC Systems)
is a super-fast
alternating
barometricpressure chamber
that helps cyclists
and other athletes
improve endurance
before they hit
the course.

games, she blew a tyre, finishing 38th. She has since
bounced back, winning more consecutive races than
any female triathlete in history. Now she is considered
the most dominant woman in the sport—even though
she has yet to win a medal. She hopes Chen’s VR
training helps to finally put her on that podium.
“It’s so hard to explain how real it is,” she says. ”It’s
not something I’ve ever experienced before.”
The goal of VR training is not merely to learn the
course, though that helps; it’s to gain an almost musclememory knowledge of the terrain and its challenges,
and to game out your responses. “I still have a pretty
steep learning curve on the bike,” says Jorgensen. “This
VR stuff is about confidence building—preparing myself
so I have as many tools as possible, mitigating anything
that could potentially happen on race day.”
Jorgensen’s body language changes when she wears
the goggles. You can see her figuring things out, says
Chen, who observed her the first time she tested them.
“All of a sudden, she was into this technical section
and realised she could look through corners,” he says.
“Her body took over as she leaned and craned her neck.
These become strategy sessions for figuring out where
you hammer down or lay back a bit if the risk is not
worth the reward.”
There is, however, one thing lacking in the VR-training
experience that Chen built—the ability to speed up or
slow down. That’s why Jorgensen can use it only in
visualisation sessions, not sitting atop and pedalling a
stationary training bike. Chen thinks it won't be long,
though, before cyclists are using the visualisation
functionality combined with a whole lot more.
“As an industry, we hope to start creating simulations
that challenge not only the visual systems, but also the
physical systems—even the balance of the inner ear,”
he says. “We want to be able to put you on a bike and
simulate G-forces. Or allow you to try different lines
through a corner to see which is fastest. But we’re not
quite there yet—and the last thing we want to do is a
science project on a successful athlete.”
Once the technology scales up, Chen sees other
training possibilities. It could, for instance, be useful
to race-car drivers when they can’t execute an actual
practice lap. (It also costs a lot of money every time a
driver takes the wheel of a professional car.) “Formula
One drivers spend a lot of time in these very complex
multimillion-dollar simulators,” Chen says. “While VR
is no substitute for driving an actual course, it will help
familiarise drivers with the track. It’s a head start.”
The cycling section of this year’s triathlon is sure to
add some classic Olympic drama, but Chen believes
Jorgensen can triumph, almost as if she were back home
and merely visualising it. “For Gwen,” he says, “we want
riding this course to be like getting up in the middle of
the night to get a glass of water from her kitchen.”

P OP SC I . C O M. AU

63

As everybody
moves in,
who's making
the rules?

BY
AMY WESTERVELT
PHOTOGRAPHY
BY PETER RAD

P OP S C I . CO M. AU

65

A man’s disembodied voice tells me to pick
up a silver handgun sitting on a seat to my
right. “You better be ready to shoot,” he says.
My stomach tightens as the station platform
comes into view. The doors open. I pick up
the gun and start firing. Torsos explode.
Strangers run at me. I squeeze rounds. More
blood. When I run out of bullets, I grab
a rifle. Shadows hit the platform. Then,
from out of nowhere, rockets fly my way. Overwhelmed—and a little
nauseous—I throw my hands in front of my face, terrified, and tear off
my virtual-reality goggles.
For five minutes, I’ve been riding Bullet Train, a VR demo from
Epic Games, while standing in a dark padded booth in downtown San
Francisco. Epic is one of 550 vendors at the Game Developer Conference,
a five-day tech-fest at the Moscone Centre exhibition complex. I look
around. The two young female game reps are grinning, like “Way cool,
right?” This is Silicon Valley, after all, land of the future. My adrenaline
is spiking. My palms are a sweaty puddle of fear and sudden relief.
The thrill of fi rst-person-shooter games is well-known. Their
adrenaline rush is the currency of a $120 billion dollar gaming industry
built on skill, competence, and fantasy alter egos. But with those games,
we’ve always been aware that we are in our living room, bowl of chips
and Red Bull at the ready—until now. VR isn’t just an incremental
improvement in technology, like better graphics and faster processing;
it’s a different encounter entirely—one that tricks your senses into
experiencing the virtual as real. “Presence” is the primary buzzword
tossed around at the GDC’s fi rst-ever virtual-reality track, the perception
that you’re not just watching the action. You are in the action.
“It’s the fi rst medium that creates the sensation that you’re somewhere
else,” says Tim Sweeney, founder and CEO of Epic Games. It is so
realistic, you have a hard time doing things contrary to your intuition.
“If you’re standing at the edge of a chasm, even though you’re really just
standing in a room,” says Sweeney, “you’re afraid to step forward.”
“Transformative” is another descriptor favoured by the young VR
evangelists, who tout headsets with the enthusiasm of 19th-century
carnival barkers. See the future right before your very eyes! Travel
continents without a passport! Dine with the dinosaurs! This year, tens
of millions of people will likely buy VR headsets. The Oculus Rift, HTC
Vive, Samsung Gear, and Google Cardboard are in homes already—and
Sony’s PlayStation VR will soon join them, connecting to millions of
consoles. It’s not only games. VR is taking root in education, healthcare,

66

PO P U L A R S CI E NCE

G R O O MI N G BY K I TT Y B ES PA L KO

I’m standing inside
a moving subway car. It’s dimly lit, but I can make
out the layer of grime on the doors and windows.

sports, architecture, and porn. A handful of early research suggests
VR embeds itself deeper in our psyche, stays with us longer, and can
alter our behaviour longer afterward than any other type of media we
consume. It’s been shown to influence racial and sexual stereotypes. It
has triggered emotional rewiring in users. With such great power comes
great responsibility. Will our immersive travels make us the best versions
of ourselves? Or the worst? Should people be allowed to virtually act out
anything they choose? What about rape fantasies? What happens when
you virtually kill people and feel like you actually did?
When researchers show people traditional media, such as TV and
movies, and then subject them to similar content in virtual reality,
they are initially affected by both equally. But a week later, “they forget
their exposure to everything but the VR scenario,” says Sun Joo Ahn,
a researcher at the University of Georgia. “What they experience in a
sensory way sticks with them over time. The effects are persistent.”
Consider too the racial- and gender-stereotyping issues already
plaguing the gaming and entertainment industries. When the line
between real and unreal becomes blurrier, do we need different rules?

Being a woman at GDC is a like being a brunette in
Sweden—you exchange knowing nods with other
members of your tribe. You also studiously avoid herds
of men with unkempt beards. Spread across three
giant buildings at Moscone, it’s Disneyland for gamers.
There are booth babes and dudes in tees walking
with their phones out, capturing every moment. The
VR track is jam-packed with the kind of buzz befitting a technology at
an inflection point. The popular kids on the block—the aforementioned
Epic, Oculus, Sony, Google, and Samsung—required appointments to
experience their wares. All told, I road-tested five VR games and didn’t
encounter a single female or minority onscreen. EVE: Valkyrie, one of
two video games bundled with the Rift, does feature a female military
captain—and black soldiers are not uncommon in war games—but, as in
all video games, they tend to play to stereotypes. That’s no accident.
“If a company’s already sold a trillion copies of Grand Theft Auto in
which we smack around women and sexualise them, why change that?”
asks Jesse Fox, a researcher I spoke to at Ohio State University. “If
companies are already taking a risk on a new technology, they’re not also
going to take risks with different types of content.”

FOX,
TAT E
UNIVERSITY
RESEARCHER

if some men
see women as sluts
and teases, and
then interact with
avatars like that in
vr, then their ideas
are confirmed.

Fox studies the way in which new
media technologies—including VR,
video games, and social networking—
influence our offl ine identities, beliefs,
and behaviours. She has studied how
virtual virgins and female vamps
altered users’ real-world attitudes. After
exposing research subjects to vamps
in VR, Fox found women and men are
both more likely to buy into the rape
myth: the idea that women have an
unconscious desire to be raped.
“In media studies, we’ve seen that
people will look to confi rm their biases,”
Fox says. "If you think all black men
are criminals, for example, you might
see a black male criminal in a fi lm and
go, ‘See, I was right.’” Extending those
stereotypes into VR, where interactions
feel more real, could reinforce them
further. “If there are men who see
women as sluts and teases, and then
they interact with avatars that play into
those stereotypes in virtual reality,”
she says, “then the more their ideas are
confi rmed, and the more they’ll believe
them.” Extreme uses of VR might be
inevitable. “Say I’m a teenage boy who
gets rejected for prom, so I go home and
make that girl’s avatar, and rape her in
a virtual world,” she says. “These cases
pose a huge risk of harm.”
But some of the most revealing

research into the effects of VR has
illustrated its strange power to bring out
the best in us. Jeremy Bailenson, who
runs the Virtual Human Interaction Lab
at Stanford University, designed what
he calls the “superhero experiment.”
He gave 16 VR subjects the power of
flight—a do-gooder superpower, in
the subjects’ eyes—and tasked them
with finding a missing kid in a digital
cityscape. He gave 17 other subjects
the same task but via helicopter. After
the session, the “superheroes” were
more likely to help a real-life research
assistant pick up an “accidentally”
knocked-over cup of pens from the floor.
Bailenson says it suggests that
the first group had transferred their
superhero identity into the real world.
However, he is not sure why exactly.
One thing he does know is that a VR
experience “tends to cause more empathy
and change than other media,” he says.
Concerned about the impact their
violent games might have on VR
users, some gaming companies are
self-policing. Piers Jackson, the game
director at Guerrilla Cambridge, told a
panel at Paris Games Week

68

PO PUL A R S CI E NCE

this past October that portraying death in the company’s first-personshooter game on PlayStation VR, was off-limits. It’s just too intense.
“We made some core decisions early on that we weren’t going to kill
people,” he told the panel. “That was something we deliberately did.”
When new, all forms of media—from radio to television to the Web—
are met with some trepidation over their potential to warp malleable
young minds. That, in turn, usually elicits eye rolling from creators.
“There’s always a tendency to ascribe old problems to new media
whenever it comes out, right?” asks Sweeney. “You read newspapers
from the 1930s, and it was comic books that were degrading our youth.”
But even he admits VR is a more visceral media than we’ve ever seen.
“A horror game can be really scary, and a violent game could be very
realistically violent,” he says. “That means developers have to put more
thought into the sorts of experiences they want to give players.”
It’s not just video games that have insiders worried. Companies will
also one day build out social VR platforms that will let you “hang out”
with friends or strangers around the world—say, to watch a movie or work
or… use your imagination. With harassment already a problem in online
communities, what might intimidation feel like in a headset? “Someone
could whisper horrible things in your ear or invade your personal space,”
says Patrick Harris, lead game designer for Minority Media, which makes
empathy-building VR games that deal with bullying and trauma. “If they
back you up against a wall, it can be pretty scary.”
Such abuse is the reason social-media companies have put antiabuse policies in place for their users, because trolls always show up to
spoil the fun, no matter how friendly the atmosphere. VR won’t be any
different, says Mike Beltzner, a product manager on Facebook’s social VR
initiatives. “Unfortunately,” he says, “some people want to be the worst
version of themselves and do horrible things without consequence.”
Facebook identified that behaviour early on as a cost to anonymity in
the online space. “That’s why we’ve always had a tight tie between the
real you and what you’re doing online,” says Beltzner.
Enforcing those same Facebook abuse policies on social VR will ensure
it delivers more delight than distress. However, says Beltzner, that
approach does not apply to the company’s Oculus game users. It likely
won’t be apply to other VR game platforms, even multiplayer games
where players interact. “In gaming, a lot of people don’t want it to be tied
to their real identity,” Beltzner says. “We’ll respect that.”

There’s always a
tendency to ascribe
old problems to new
media. newspapers
in the 1930s said
comic books were
degrading our youth.

Choose
your
(virtual)
weapon
The National Football League is not a place one looks
to for empathy building. But in order to combat
racism and sexism in its ranks, it is considering
using diversity-training scenarios developed by
Bailenson. In his work, Bailenson has found people
are more likely to feel empathy for the opposite sex or other ethnicities
if they experience sexism or prejudice in a virtual world. It’s almost like
experiencing it fi rsthand.
In one of Bailenson’s empathy modules, an angry white avatar is
harassing the user. When the user raises his arms in self-defense, he sees
he has black skin. “Allowing someone to really experience the trauma
another person deals with makes it meaningful,” says Bailenson. “It
creates a lasting respect for other people.” Bailenson’s company, STRIVR,
already supplies some NFL teams with virtual-reality athletic training
and can easily add these empathy modules to those headsets.
Not surprisingly, the psychiatric community has seized onto the
empathic and transformative powers of this new medium. It already
uses VR to treat drug addicts and soldiers suffering from post-traumatic
stress. The game SnowWorld takes acute burn victims through an icy
canyon in which harmless-looking snowmen hurl snowballs at them.
The objective: Pelt them back. Brain scans have shown that the playful
and distracting mission, and the gently falling snow, eases pain.
While no one has yet conducted MRI brain studies on people playing
violent or sexist VR games—mostly because patients need to keep their
heads still to be scanned—it isn’t hard to imagine what might happen if
you gave those snowmen a bad attitude and some sharp butcher knives.
Good or bad, the market—not policy—will dictate how and where
virtual reality spreads. We can’t possibly know how to respond to things
we haven’t yet observed. But media experts and academics say that
we can start tackling the stereotype issue by employing more women
and minorities at companies making the content—and by sharing the
experiences with diverse audiences who can influence what gets made.
That’s become a mission for Jacqwi Campbell. She runs the nonprofit
Tonbo Haus, which curates events around San Francisco to educate
people on VR’s presence and power. “The only way VR can be inclusive
is by adding quality, diverse content,” she says. “The only way you can
do that is by getting equipment into the hands of more people.”
Early indicators suggest we’re headed in that direction: Bailenson says
he regularly advises big VR companies like Oculus-owner Facebook and
Samsung on content. Even at the GDC bro-fest, the VR track featured far
more talks about minorities, women, and dealing with harassment than
the traditional gaming tracks did. So it’s on people’s radar. There is also
talk of a VR-specific rating system, and Oculus has said it won’t allow
porn on its headsets (although there’s already a hack for that). In each
case, the message is clear: Proceed with caution.
“We do this time and again with new technologies,” says Jesse Fox,
the Ohio State VR researcher. “We just put it out to the masses fi rst
and then look into impacts later. Like with cellphones. We made them
this essential part of everyone’s life and job—and then figured out that
probably all that screen time wasn’t healthy. That’s a big concern for me
with VR. We just don’t know what we’re walking into yet.”

From virtual killing to actual healing, VR’s
applications are already myriad. Here are
three windows into those worlds.

A Microcomputer
Writ Large
Funnily enough, Cambridge-based engineer
James Newman’s enormous computer is made
possible only by the technological marvel of
miniaturisation. His task is easy to describe: build a
basic machine using transistors, with LEDs to show
how data flows through the system. But turning it into
reality has taken thousands of hours of meticulous
work, and a surprisingly large chunk of cash...

Large as it is, without cheap
and readily available solid-state
transistors, the Megaprocessor - as
Newman calls it - would have needed
several rooms to accommodate
valves or switches.
“The architecture is fairly
conventional,” says Newman. “One
oddity is the multiply, divide and
square root instructions which are
unusual in smaller processors.
“Overall the design is not
completely brilliant; facing the cliff
of soldering, I blinked and made
some compromises
that in the short term
seemed to reduce the
by
amount of work to
ANTHONY
be done, but actually
FORDHAM

72

POPUL A R S CI E NCE

made things harder. I should have
added some extra adders and saved
myself some multiplexors and a
kilometre of cable.”
Students of computer engineering
will recognise the various parts of
Newman’s computer (above right).
Each section is studded with hundreds
of LEDs to give a visual representation
of how each calculation is processed,
stage-by-stage. In many ways it’s a
philosophical exercise, rather than
an attempt to build a real performer even at this scale.
“A few decades ago, commercial
machines were built out of transistors
that run much faster than the
Megaprocessor,” says Newman. “I
don’t think the physical size has that

Engineer James Newman says he built the
Megaprocessor to get a better understanding of how
the computers we ta ke for granted really wo rk .

IM AG ES BY

SWNS CAMBRIDGE

AU G U ST 201 6

TECH WE TAKE FOR GRANTED
Newman says part of building the
Megaprocessor was about understanding
the technology that we take for granted
today. “It’s not just tech we take for
granted, how many of us know how
soap is made?” Newman asks. “Much as
it pains me to say so, I don’t think it is
important for most people to understand

how things work in detail, they’ve got
stuff to do, other things to look at. It’s
just a shame they don’t understand how
tech works because they’d enjoy it more.
“But for those of us in the trade I think
it is important. If you want get the best
out things I believe you have to have
some understanding of how they work

STAT E
M AC H INE &
STATUS FLAGS

MEMORY

CO NTRO L
& I/O

much significance with regard to the speed
of operation. Speed of light is 3x108 metres
per second, or about a foot [304 mm] per
nanosecond. The machine is about 10 m long,
so end-to-end a photon takes 30 ns, maybe
about 50 ns in copper.
“I didn’t design it for speed, but I would
have liked it to be faster. The biggest error I
made was with regards to pull up resistors.
Having LEDs everywhere doesn’t help,
adding capacitance and load.”
And like so many processor designers
before him, seeing the Megaprocessor in
action seems to give Newman the itch to
iterate for even more power:
“With a bit more care and competence I
think it would have been entirely feasible
to build a machine in the same style that
could run at 100 kilohertz. Maybe even a few

and are put together. Then you can
better work with them, rather than
fighting them. But I get the impression
there’s an awful lot of software
engineers who don’t really understand
what a processor is and how it works.
Might even struggle with looking at
assembler. That’s not good.”

G E N E RAL
PURPOSE
REG ISTE RS

S P EC I A L
PURPOSE
REG I ST E RS

I N PU T &
I NST RU CT I ON
D ECOD I NG

100 kHz. (Currently I top
out at about 8 kHz).
“Changing from a
simple ripple adder to
one using look ahead carry
generation would more than
double the speed.” We’ll take
James’ word for it.
“At this point you might then choose to
switch to better components. To get a bit
more speed and still keep the ability to watch
data flow. Ditch the LEDs and really design
for speed and then you’d get to the MHz that
earlier systems reached. Then put it in a chip!”
If nothing else, the Megaprocessor shows
exactly how remarkable it is that we’re now
at a point with computational technology,
where you can buy a Raspberry Pi (which
can run at 700MHz) for $15.

Three
DIY Bug
Traps That
Actually
Work
1 ST I N K B U G S
Omnipresent stink
bugs, with their pungent
coriander-like odour
(used to defend against
predators), can make
a home uninhabitable.
Ashcraft has a quick fix.
Start by cutting off the
top 50 mm of a two-litre
bottle. Then invert and
tape the neck to the
opening so the top sits

74

POPUL A R S CI E NCE

within the bottle. Drop a
small battery-powered
light into the container.
In a dimly lit space, the
light will attract stink
bugs, trapping them until
you can dispose of them.
“Make sure to place
this in garages, sheds,
pool pump houses, or
other dim or dark areas,”
Ashcraft says.

Uninvited guests at your next barbeque can be real pests.
You can get rid of your annoying insect visitors with a DIY mozzie trap.
But bear in mind that not all the traps you find on the Internet work.
A sonic mosquito repellent is one failure. “There is no scientific basis
for bug-repellent traps that claim to use a high-pitched
frequency to drive away pests,” says Roxanne Connelly, an
entomologist at the University of Florida. Traps claiming to
attract bugs with yeast are equally dubious.
Connelly and Ty Ashcraft, an exterminator at Holistic Pet
Solutions in Charlotte, North Carolina, offer three traps that
actually get the job done, and explain why they work.
by
MATT GIL E S

2 M O SQ U I TO ES
Not all mosquitoes are
attracted to the same
bait. Connelly suggests a
low-tech “ovitrap,” which
uses standing water to
lure Aedes albopictus
and Aedes aegypti, two
common breeds. First,
cut off the top of a two-litre plastic bottle, and
spray-paint the outside
a solid black. Then drill

two small overflow holes
below the brim. Cover
them, and the top, with
fine mesh. Secure a wet
cloth around the brim
(soak it once a day) and
fill the trap with water.
Eggs, laid on the fabric
instead of in your ponds,
will hatch, fall through
the mesh, and grow too
large to escape.

3 F R U I T F L I ES
For fruit flies, Connelly’s
recommended trap is
simple. Fill a 600mlsize bowl with a sudsy
mixture of water and
dish soap. Then set
a smaller bowl, filled
with a quarter-cup of
red-wine vinegar, afloat
in the centre. The vinegar
attracts fruit flies, which
then get stuck in the

suds. Do this a few days
before having people
over. “I refresh the soap
twice a day, and within
three days, that typically
clears all the flies,”
Connelly says.

IL LU ST R AT IONS BY

Chris Philpot

AU GU ST 2 0 1 6

Manual
Backyard Science

I Created a
Vortex Ring
in the Pool
One day, I was browsing online when I
discovered a video of two round shadows on
the bottom of a swimming pool—and nothing
on the surface that might be casting them. Even
weirder, they were moving, in unison, across the
pool instead of dying out. When I asked a fluiddynamics professor what was going on, he said it
was probably a half-ring vortex.
To test this hypothesis, I created my own

black spots by dragging a dinner plate
through my friend’s backyard pool. The
plate’s motion created, on the pool’s
surface, two dimples that slowly drifted
away from me while remaining in sync
with each other. When I squeezed
a few drops of food colouring into
each dimple, the dye swirled down to
reveal an incredible half-ring vortex
connecting the dimples to each other.
A vortex is a spinning column of
liquid or gas, such as a tornado. I knew
my experiment was a vortex because
it carried the dye along—and vortices,
unlike waves, can transport matter.
Vortices form because of shear force,
when a fast fluid moves past a slower

one. When you push the plate, the
liquid next to it is dragged forward, while
the water farther out remains still. This
speed difference makes the fluid curl
around the plate’s submerged edge.
The ends of the vortex create two
dips in the water’s surface that bend
sunlight outward, just like a glass lens.
This creates a bright ring around two
dark circles, forming the black spots.

HOW TO MAKE A VORTEX

by
DIANNA COWERN

Dip a plate halfway into a
still pool. Drag it forward
for a few centimetres and
gently lift it out at an angle.

I L LU ST RATI O N S BY R O B ERT L . P R I NC E

Look for the two dimples
that form on the surface of
the water, above the black
spots on the bottom.

D ro p a l i tt l e fo o d co l o r i ng
into each dimple. The dye
will be pulled down into
the half-ring vor tex.

P OP SC I . C O M. AU

75

Manual
Toolbox

1
3DOODL E R
STA RT
$ 49.99

2
LIX PEN
$1 39.95

3

Add Dimension
to Your Drawing

7 TEC H P E N
$ 8 1 .00

Living in the future—as we do—pens and 3D printers are no longer
separate items. You can now create plastic masterpieces on the go
with 3D-printing pens. Simply place the pen on a surface, draw a line
up into the air, and then start adding details to this anchor.
The pens are still new. 3Doodler, which launched its $2 million
Kickstarter campaign in 2013, was the ﬁrst. Now there are several
upstarts to choose from, so we tested three popular models.

76

1

PO PUL A R S CI E NCE

3DOODLER START
3Doodler sells two models: the flagship 3Doodler
2.0 and, for novices like
us, the Start. The latter
practically screams “user-friendly” with its single
button and chunky, graspable body. Insert plastic
filament into the hole at
the top, press the orange
button, and wait about
60 seconds for the pen to
warm up. Then hold the
same button to draw. A
$99 kit includes the pen
as well as stencils that
help you get over the
initial learning curve.

2

LIX PEN
Weighing in at 1.6 ounces,
the Lix has the slimmest,
lightest design we tested,
which makes it feel more
like a real pen than its
competitors. It even
includes a penlike clip at
the end, which has four
green indicator lights that
show when the filament
is ready to use. The pen
effect is marred slightly
by the fact that Lix must
remain plugged into a
power source while in
use. Still, you can rest
easy knowing it’s the
classiest of 3D tools.

3

7TECH PEN
7Tech is the only one of
the three pens we tested
that lets users control the
filament’s speed and temperature. You can read
these figures on a small
screen and adjust with
two sets of arrow-shaped
buttons. While 7Tech
gives you control, it’s
cumbersome: It needs
to be plugged in during
use, and the filament
that comes with the pen
is curved in a circular
shape, which sticks out of
the device and gets in an
aspiring artist’s way.

Gary Hug has
worked as a food
s c ienti s t a n d a
machinist, but his
pass ion i s a mate ur
astronomy.

telescope. Hug built everything himself, except
the 22-inch mirror and the motors that move
the scope. A camera feeds views of the cosmos
into his “Observatory Control Centre and
Laundry Room.”
Hug calls his telescope Little Blue 22, named
for the mirror’s size and for the Little Blue River
where his grandfather took him fishing as a boy
because, he says, “you never knew what you were
going to catch.” Since 1997, Hug has caught, or
rather, discovered, almost 300 asteroids and a
comet. He has studied objects near Pluto and
quasars (super-bright starlike objects) up to 11
billion light-years away.
“There’s always a chance of discovery,” Hug
says. “It’s hard to remember that at two in the
morning, but generally that’s when it happens.”

“Discovery
is what gets
you going.
It’s why you
stay up all
night.”

COU RT ESY GARY HU G

Gary Hug received his first
telescope at Christmas when
he was 12. Though he became
a machinist rather than an
astronomer, the stars have
always fascinated him. He used to
drive 40 km to peer through the
27-inch telescope at the Farpoint
Observatory outside Topeka,
Kansas, for eight hours at a time.
Then, nearly 10 years ago, he tired
of the commute and decided to
build his own spyglass.
Hug’s “Sandlot Observatory”
is a wood-frame shed in his
backyard that houses a twometre-long 680-kilogram

The Triﬁd Nebula,
5,200 light-years
away, as shot by
Hug.

BECOME
A HUMAN
CIRCUIT
BOARD
by
GR E NNAN
MILLIK E N

HOW IT’S MADE
Zheng and Lalwani
sewed a soft grid of
felt and conductive
thread onto a plain
T-shirt. At each
intersection on the
grid, they added
small metal snap-

ﬁts where interchangeable circuit
components could
attach. To create
each component,
they embedded a
snap and an electronic piece—such

as a battery or an
LED—in brightly
colored felt. An
electrical current
ﬂows between
snaps via the
conductive thread
to let the battery

component light
the LED. Wearers
can rearrange
pieces to create
diﬀerent circuits,
such as allowing
a push button
to control LEDs.

Two years ago, industrial
designer Clement Zheng attended
a workshop on soft electronics.
He was learning how to put
blinking LEDs into the eyes of a
stuffed animal when a light went
on in his own head: Why not
use soft electronics to build a
functioning circuit board on a
T-shirt? So Zheng and fellow
designer Manasvi Lalwani
created Shirt Circuit—an
educational electronics tool
kit that lets you do just that.

77

Archives
May 1972

A Nazi
Mastermind
Hypes The
Space Shuttle!
No less a science superstar than Wernher von Braun
was one of the ﬁrst people to write about the Space
Shuttle in Popular Science. His article was part of
celebrations for the 100th Anniversary Issue. That’s
not 100 issues of the magazine, mind you - that’s one
hundred years of Popular Science.
In the century 1872 - 1972, humans went from being
pulled around everywhere by horses (and the occasional
steam train ride if they were good) to not just ﬂying, but
walking on the moon and designing a reusable space plane.
Which is where Wernher von Braun came in. How
many other magazines still in print today can claim
they once had a genuine Nazi super-scientist writing for
them? Sure, von Braun claimed he only joined the SS to
avoid persecution, and that he only wore the uniform
once, but the fact remains - before NASA he was an
enthusiastic participant in a scientiﬁc program that
used actual slave labour.
Ah but history is a complicated place. By 1972, von Braun’s
Nazi past was well behind him, along with most of his life:
the man would be dead by 1977. But until then, he remained
an absolute champion of the human exploration of space.
While others wanted to leave exploration of the
solar system to robots, von Braun kept the dream of a
Mars colony alive. He was determined that “manned”
spaceﬂight should not end with the rapid wind-up of the
increasingly truncated Apollo program.
As we know, by 1972, Americans had become bored with
the moon shots. TV networks barely bothered to report
on the later Apollos, and ﬂights were being cancelled and
funds redirected in a post-Vietnam era.
But then a core within NASA came up with the
concept of a reusable space vehicle. Rather
than spend tens of millions on a launch
where the entire spacecraft would be
thrown away, this new Space Launch
System would have at its heart an
amazing space plane, an elegant
delta-wing with a massive payload
bay and ample space for crew to
The S huttl e was to del iver R AMS
into orbit: self- contained mini
stations that would do experiments .
Alas, the RAMS were neutered...

78

PO PUL A R S CI E NCE

The mag had not yet given
up on the flagging Apollo
program in 1972, assuming that
future moon missions would
get even more complex and
ambitious... those poor fools.

work and sleep.
This thing wouldn’t just be bigger,
safer and more technologically
sophisticated than Apollo, it would
be cheaper and faster to launch.
Take oﬀ, land, refuel and launch
again by the next weekend. It was
going to be awesome.
Of course, the Shuttle didn’t quite
turn out that way. It fulﬁlled some
of its promise, that’s for
sure: it was reusable.
Yes, reusable like a
car that needed
a complete
bare-metal
restoration
every time you
drove it down
to the shops.
As it turned
out, preparing a
returned Shuttle
for relaunch didn’t

by ANTHONY
take days. It took
FORDHAM
months. Each Shuttle
was supposed to
be able to ﬂy 50 times
a year, but managed barely four
ﬂights a year on average.
The program was expensive,
two orbiters were destroyed, and
the Shuttle remains the deadliest
spacecraft ever ﬂown - 14 people
lost their lives in the Challenger
and Columbia disasters.
And yet... seeing the Shuttle
sitting out there on the pad with its
distinctive orange main tank (left
unpainted to save weight) and two
solid fuel boosters, is to believe in a
future where humans go to space as
a matter of routine.
Wernher von Braun’s 1972
editorial on the Shuttle, if nothing
else, shows that it really was 1960s
technology in a 1970s body that
somehow became an icon of the

AU G U ST 201 6

SPACE SHUTTLES GET THE GREEN LIGHT
NASA is now moving quickly to develop a reusable space
transportation system. Here’s how we’ll put it to use after Apollo

T he magazine was founded
back in May 1872 as a sort
of gentleman’s newspaper,
chock full of jolly interesting
things. Little could those
undoubtedly top-hatted and
mutton-chopped gents have
known, that 100 years later
their magazine would have a)
a nice glossy cover, b) in full
colour and c) showing not
just an internal combustion
engine, but a new TYPE of
internal combustion engine.

Of the three Shuttle concepts here,
von Braun picked the one on the far
left. The far right is closest to reality.

1980s. His enthusiasm for what the
Shuttle could have been remains as
infectious today as it would have
done to readers 44 years ago.
And as for Popular Science’s
founding editors? Well, I think it’s
safe to assume this article would
have simply blown their minds.

At a special Kennedy Space
Center launch complex sometime
in the late seventies, massive
high-bay hangar doors will slide
open. Slowly, ponderously, an
odd-shaped space vehicle will
emerge on a treaded crawler
transport and inch toward a
nearby launch pad [1].
The vehicle, the nation’s first
reusable space transportation
system, is moving rapidly into
the development stage following
President Nixon’s January
endorsement of the spaceshuttle concept. The President
said, “The space shuttle will give
us routine access to space by
sharply reducing costs in dollars
and preparation time.”
This multipurpose shuttle,
which will take off like a rocket,
fly in orbit like a spaceship,
and land like an airplane, will
replace almost all present
expendable launch vehicles. It
will carry into space most of the
nation’s payloads, scientific and
applications [sic], manned and
unmanned, civilian and military.
Towering as high as 175 feet[2]
- about 17 stories - the space
shuttle will weigh some 4.7
million pounds when fueled for
launch. It will have delta-wing,
airplane-like orbiter about the
size of a DC-9 sidestrapped to
its disposable liquid-hydrogen /
liquid-oxygen tank.
It will also have a booster,
and depending on the booster
configuration selected this
spring, the launch sequence
will vary slightly. Using one
competing design as an example
[von Braun then describes a
launch configuration based on the
booster concept from the three
examples that least resembles the
final Shuttle configuration.]
...Even if we allow $2 million
for each orbiter fuel tank lost on

by WERNHER
von BRAUN
NASA Deputy
Associate
Administrator
PS Consulting
Editor on Space
[This article has
been heavily
abridged due to
the rambling style
of 1970s reportage.
US spelling is
preserved for
historicity]

a mission, total flight cost, with
reusable liquid-fuel boosters, is
estimated at $7.7 million. With
solid-fuel boosters it may run $10
million per flight, but development
cost would be lower [3]...
...An estimated $5.5 billion over
a six-year period will be needed to
develop the shuttle system [4]...
...But man’s future role
in space will far exceed his
contributions in service and
maintenance. The shuttle’s
huge cargo compartment can
accommodate Research and
Applications Modules (RAMs) house-trailer-size, pressurized
cylinders developed for research
and exploratory missions [5]...
...After obtaining their data, the
scientists would return to Earth
with the equipment, analyze the
data, and write their papers.
The RAM would then be refitted
for the next sortie mission. For
astronomical missions, where
precise telescope alignment is
essential, the RAM may even be
disconnected from the orbiter to
float freely nearby[6].
Test flights should begin in
1976, manned orbital test flights
in 1978, and an operational shuttle
should be ready before 1980 [7].

FOOTNOTES FROM THE FUTURE
1. In fact, the Shuttle did not reach orbit until 12th April 1981
2. It eventually topped out at 184.2 feet (56.1 m)
3. Over the lifetime of the program, each Shuttle flight
actually cost around $1.5 billion (depending how you measure).
4. Total cost in 2016 dollars for the program was $196 billion.
5. These were not eventually developed, but the Shuttle did place
large ISS modules in orbit, including the largest, JAXA’s Kibo.
6. Again, didn’t happen, but the Shuttle played a vital role in the
Hubble program. The telescope was launched aboard Discovery
in 1990, and the infamous mirror repair was done by the crew of
Endeavour in 1993.
7. He probably thought he was being conservative, but the
complexity of the Shuttle meant it did not fly a proper mission
until 1981. And yet, this hugely ambitious program lasted until
2011, despite two disasters and many technical setbacks.

P OP S C I . C O M. AU

79

Then
Retro Invention

From simple single -screen “catch” games to
elborate puzzlers, Nintendo pushed the Game
& Watch concept as far as it could befo re
advances in IT made the Game Boy possible.

Nintendo Game & Watch
By the late 1970s, Gunpei Yokoi was
already a legend at Nintendo. With a
handful of inventions (including an actual
extendable hand), he’d effectively saved
Nintendo from bankruptcy, following the
collapse of the Japanese playing card
market in the mid-1960s.
by
A NTH ONY FORD HAM

80

PO P U L A R S CI E NCE

He was known in the company
as a man who, when asked to
create something amazing for
the Christmas rush, could be
relied upon to deliver. He was a
toymaker of the old school, taking
a good idea, stripping it down to its
essential elements, and packaging
it to sell in the millions.
Legend has it that one night,
while riding Japan’s famous
bullet train, he watched a fellow

salaryman idly fiddling with a
pocket calculator - still a rather
obscure and bookish device in
1979. Yet as the man played, Yokoi
saw not an actuarial tool, but the
nucleus of a new kind of toy. A
portable, electronic game.
Videogame consoles that
plugged into the TV were starting
to hit the market, but Yokoi took
a different approach. Rather
than using a microprocessor,

AU G U ST 2 01 6

Nintendo had to get pretty
in n ovative to bri ng “colour”
to their LCD games.
Panorama Screen games
used a mirror and overlay.

his prototype game used a
microcontroller - a fixed-state
integrated circuit that could do
little more than control a very basic
liquid crystal display, and count.
The first game was beyond simple. It
was called Ball, and balls “fell” from the
top of the screen. If the player “caught”
the balls, the score went up. Drop three balls, and the
game ended. The only controls were left and right.
Because the game needed a clock - in the form of a
quartz crystal - to track movement and detect catches,
it made sense to also include a simple LCD time readout,
displayed whenever the game was not being played. Thus,
Game & Watch was born.
From Gunpei Yokoi’s simple first game sprang a dozen
or so titles, each more complex than the last. Parachute
was another “catch” game, with little men replacing the
balls and a life-raft controlled by the player. Extra circuitry
made any “dropped” parachutists fall into the ocean and
be eaten by sharks. Also included was a “Game B”, a slight
variation where parachutists had a chance to be caught
on a palm tree, swing back and forth a random number of
times, before falling off, thus adding unpredictability.
Then, things started to get more complex. Nintendo
brought out a distinctive folding version of Game & Watch
that used two displays, and started doing simple ports of
its TV-connected Nintendo Entertainment System games.
Among the most famous of course was Donkey
Kong. This distinctive orange game became a fixture in
schoolyards around the world, and it managed to replicate
most of the gameplay from the console version: Mario
had to jump barrels thrown by Donkey Kong, climb the
construction site, and unhook a girder to send the mighty
ape plummeting to, well, a severe headache.
Nintendo even did a Game & Watch version of Zelda.
This extremely cut-down version saw Link fight the same
goblin in a castle corridor over and over while skeletons
stabbed at him through the floorboards. The upper screen
was reserved for a map, a basic inventory (including TriForce), and a chamber where Link would fight a “boss” in
the form of a dragon.
Bombsweeper was an unusual title, in that it was
double-screen but all the action took place on the lower
display. A maze-based puzzler, it made use of the falling

cost of ROM chips to include
a surprising number of
different level.
Then Nintendo
started to get a bit
tangential. Weird
folding systems
with reflecting
mirrors relied
on sunlight
to create a
colour display - the
Panorama Screen system
chewed through batteries,
though. There were also
see-through units called
Crystal Screen (Balloon
Fight and Climber) and
two-player games that
stored tiny controllers
inside themselves (the Micro
vs System, which featured
Donkey Kong 3 and others).
So why do we care about
Game & Watch today?
Because these clever little
devices gave rise to first
the Game Boy and then the
Nintendo DS and 3DS. The
distinctive cross-shaped
Nintendo D-pad controller
has since been copied and
iterated on everything from
the PlayStation’s DualShock
to your TV’s remote.
You can even make an
argument that Game & Watch,
and the various Game Boys
that came after, paved the
way for the smartphone. By
the time the iPhone rolled
around, the idea of sitting in
public fiddling with and being
completely absorbed by the
screen of a small electronic
device was perfectly normal.
Now we see Nintendo
doing the same thing again
with Pokémon Go and
augmented reality. Who
knows what weird thing
they’ll teach us next.

DONKEY KONG
Released: 1982
Gameplay: Climb a
construction site while
jumping barrels to unhook
a girder, dispose of a giant
ape, and save the girl.
GREENHOUSE
Released: 1982
Gameplay: Prevent
bugs and spiders from
destroying plants in a
greenhouse by spraying
them with DDT.
OIL PANIC
Released: 1982
Gameplay: Catch and
dispose of oil leaks at a
petrol station without
causing an explosion or
getting oil on customers.
BALLOON FIGHT
Released: 1986
Gameplay: Operate a
pernicious jetpack to
catch balloons carrying
scraps of a map to a very
spiky boss f ight.
BOMBSWEEPER
Released: 1987
Gameplay: Descend into
the sewers to f ind a bomb
planted by a maniac. Solve
a maze within a time limit
to avoid detonation.
SAFEBUSTER
Released: 1988
Gameplay: As a policeman,
catch bombs hurled from
the top of a building, lest
they land on a safe below
and, well, bust it.
GOLD CLIFF
Released: 1988
Gameplay: Climb shaky
scaffolding up a ruined
temple, unlock an ancient
tomb and stab an Aztec
god. Watch out for crabs.

DONKEY KONG
If Game & Watch had a mascot, it was
Donkey Kong. There were many Donkey
Kong themed games, and after the first,
the big ape was cast as the hero. He
survived the jungle, was saved by his
son, battled bees in multiplayer and
even played ice hockey.

P OP SC I . C O M. AU

81

Labrats

STORY BY

Subject Zero

The Siege
Kept prisoner by a pretend
instance of a pretend animal
Part of the reason my lifestyle as
an itinerate scientific test subject
works... kind of... is that I have a selfdiagnosed psychological condition I
like to think of as “anti-hoarding.”
Stuff, physical stuff I mean,
makes me... itchy. In my tenement
flat I have a couch, a small table,
a chair for that table, a bench, a
double-mattress, a fitted sheet,
a doona, and a pillow. On the
windowsill I have one pale blue
vase with nothing in it. I’d throw
the vase away but for some reason
the previous tenant glued it to the
windowsill. Oh and my cat Aristides,
but he comes and goes. Plus he’s a
person, not a thing, okay?
Anyway the point of this
catalogue of minimalism is to
point out that, not only do I not
have anything worth stealing, I
barely have anything at all. This is
a lifestyle decision that allows me
to both indulge my psychological
peccadillos and also survive on
little more than $125 a week.

Yet here I am. Fully under siege
in my own home.
People are banging on the door,
demanding to be let in. People are
banging at the window, demanding
to be let in. Everyone wants in.
“Articuno!” they’re shrieking.
“Let us catch the Articuno!”
My only piece of semi-modern
technology is a smartphone, a
battered off-brand thing that some
start-up gave me in lieu of $125.
I was pissed at the time, but have
come to appreciate the apparently
inexhaustible data plan on the PR
account sim that’s in this thing. Of
course, my natrual paranoia means
I’m constantly worried the data
could run out at any time, so I don’t
download any apps.
I glance at the phone again. I’m
waiting for Atalanta, my sort of
definitely not girlfriend, to come and
rescue me from the siege. I’d texted
her an hour ago and mentioned
the crazed people banging on the
door yelling variations on “We must
icuno!” She seemed
ristically excited to
us and travel across
to come and see me.
ing what that’s all
some kind of scuffle
e the door. Then
liar creepy tapping.
ses fellow test subject
through the keyhole.
e in. You gotta let me
we’re mates aren’t we?”
approach the door.
mething seems off. “Is
lanta with you?” I ask.
ple are clearly fighting
re, in the corridor.
esn’t care about

you man!” yells The Mistake, suddenly furious for no
reason I can figure out. “She treats you like crap! She
doesn’t deserve this Articuno!”
Damnit he’s infected with the same madness, or
whatever this is. Something heavy hits the window.
I glance around. About sixteen faces are all pressed
up against it, and below the faces all these fingers
are pointing down, as if indicating I should unlatch the
window and let these maniacs pour inside.
I walk over and pull the cord on the battered
venetian blinds. Then I wiggle the cord back and forth
for a few seconds until the blinds finally come down.
The faces howl and gibber as they’re slowly obscured.
The Mistake is still at the door. “Listen man,” he’s
saying. “If you let me in I’ll give you... ah...” I get a
sense he’s desperately going through his pockets to
find something, anything of value. “Oh come on! It’s
MEEEEE...!” His scream is drawn out as someone
drags him away from the door and off down the hall.
“Hey,” says a soft voice, right at the keyhole. I exhale
in relief: it’s Atalanta. I quickly release the deadbolt
and inch the door open. She doesn’t say anything, just
barges inside, slams the door behind her, and looks
around wildly. She turns to me, all green-eyed and
mysterious with her hair down over her scar.
“Where is it?” she says in that breathless way I like
so much. “Have you seen it?”
“Seen WHAT?” I scream. “What are you talking
about? What the hell is going ON?”
“The Articuno!” breathes Atalanta.
“The rarest Pokémon in the game!
This is the first one to spawn,
anywhere, why this...” She trails
off. We turn. The door is making an
ominous creaking noise.
“I think I should just set the dead-”
I manage, but then the whole thing
splinters inwards, and at least 80
people burst into the room, mobiles
Issue #94,
held up like shields or swords or
something. The window shatters too, September
bits of venetian blind go everywhere,
2016. On
and it’s a scrum. An affray. Punches
sale 1st
are thrown. Extremities are bitten.
September
Sensitive parts are gouged. The
vase finally explodes into shards for
2016
future archaeologists to puzzle over.
CHINA’S SPACE
“Acquisition is pain!” I scream from
PROGRAM! //
somewhere down the bottom of the
The Destruction
ruck. “Acquisition is pain!”
of the Dark
But no one listens. They never do.
Web // WERNER
I just have to wait it out, until they
HERZOG TALKS
AI // Augmented
catch ‘em all.

NEXT
ISSUE!

Reality + MORE!

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POPUL A R S CI E NCE

ďŹ ne mechanical watchmaking, from japan.

Trimatic symbolises three Seiko inventions
that ensure the highest levels of reliability
and durability in its mechanical watches.